Do You Know What Mindful Eating Is?
I recently became acquainted with the term “Mindful Eating“. In a nutshell, the idea is to be aware of what you’re eating and why. I used to think I was aware of what I was eating but now I realize that there are many times that I eat, not because of a hunger signal coming from my stomach, but because of some other stimulus.
Eating without being mindful of it can be surprising to some people. When you want to lose weight, the formula is simple. Less food in, more calories out and voila: weight loss. If you’ve been on a diet you know it’s a little more complicated than that. Eating sometimes seems to have a mind of its own and happens without a lot of thought – eating without being mindful about it.
Mindful eating means thinking about every thing that you eat and why you’re really eating it. For example, if turning on the TV always leads to mindless munching, that’s something that would be good to realize so you can head it off. One thing that I also became aware of is that when it’s lunchtime or dinner time, I eat. Often times, I’m not even hungry but I eat anyway, because it’s time to eat. You would have a hard time calling that ‘mindful’.
I think for most people one of the biggest causes of mindless eating is boredom. Nothing to do, nowhere to go often leads to a quick binge of eating for some stimulation. Eating is always there as a fallback when we can’t think of anything else to do or maybe when we’re trying to avoid doing something unpleasant. Opening a bag of potato chips has a lot more immediate gratification than balancing a checkbook or doing the laundry.
Eating to please someone else is another potential trap of mindless eating. Everybody seems to know someone who loves to cook for their families and friends and, for them, food equals love. It can be very hard to not overeat in that situation because by rejecting their food, they feel that you’re rejecting their love. Eating to make someone else feel good is a common predicament but if you can find some other way of demonstrating your love, you can avoid hurting their feelings and avoid putting on the extra pounds.
Mindful eating can be a complicated subject. What seems like a simple everyday action can have some deep rooted motivations. If you can identify the situations and the triggers that cause you to overeat, that will go a long way to getting your weight under control and keeping it that way. [..]
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