Episode 12: What Does It Mean to Practice Mindful Eating?

Mindful eating is more than being cognizant of your food choices. It’s a practice that can help you find balance in your nutrition, improve your relationship with food, and cultivate healthier eating behaviors. This episode gives you three ways to get started with mindful eating.

Episode Transcript:

INTRO MUSIC: Welcome to The Compassionate Wellness Podcast. I'm Alex Treanor. I'm a Nationally Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach, and I am so excited you're here. The wellness industry is full of do's and do not's, should's and should not's. But I like to take a different approach. I'll be sharing all things health and wellness from a joyful, real-life compassionate perspective. If you're ready to drop the cookie-cutter approach and create a life you truly love, while eating a cookie or two along the way, let's dive in.

Hey, friends! I hope your day is off to a good start. I am pumped on this week's episode. This week, we are talking about mindful eating, one of my favorite topics out there. When I start working with a new client, I sense this common belief that mindful eating is really simple. And it is simple...doesn't mean it's easy. When we start setting goals, I often hear people say, "oh, I'm just going to be more mindful this week. I'm gonna be more mindful of my food choices". My next question is always what does that mean to you? Is that just thinking about your food choices? I sense that people feel like it's kind of, "I'll just be more aware. I'm going to be more cognizant of my choices. I'll think about it." It's feels passive, when the reality is that mindful eating is actually a very active process. It takes a lot of effort, a lot of thoughts, a lot of action. It's something that you are physically doing, not something we think about or revisit as we process on our thoughts about our food for the week.

My intention for this episode is to clarify what mindful eating is and also give some examples of what it looks like so that you can take those principles and put them into action; so that you can actually start mindfully eating and getting the benefits that come from mindful eating.

While we're talking about the benefits of mindful eating, I feel like that might be a good place to start. Why even bother with mindful eating, right? What makes it beneficial, what's in it for us, when we choose to eat mindfully?

I would say 99% of my clients say that they are looking for more balance when it comes to nutrition. There's this swing between, I restrict my food intake, I try to eat really "healthy", I limit my options, and then I get tired of that, and I swing to the other direction, and I eat all the cookies, all the cakes, all the sweets, the chips, whatever it might be. There's this pendulum that swings back and forth between those two. A lot of my clients are looking to bring that pendulum swing down quite a bit. There's still going to be movement, there's days we eat more, days we eat less, but the swings aren't as extreme and it feels a bit more balanced. That's really what mindful eating does. Mindful eating brings that balance. So instead of this all or nothing mindset, or this black or white thinking, we're able to live in the middle a little bit more and navigate in that gray area, and find something that works for us and also aligns with our goals rather than feeling like those are exclusive and that it has to be one or the other. That we either are liking our foods and happy and satisfied with our food choices, or we're eating healthy and doing all the things on the should list and checking all those boxes.

Mindful eating also helps us to foster a better relationship with food, just like we talked about with that balance. We're not viewing things as food rules, we're not viewing it as a diet; it feels a lot more sustainable. So you can swing that pendulum back and forth a little bit, and that works, right? That works for long-term change rather than these huge swings that give us some momentum, and then we collapse, and then we feel like we're making progress again, and then we collapse.

It also brings more satisfaction with our food choices because we can incorporate those foods we like and that we enjoy in a way that also helps us to achieve our goals. When we're focused on mindful eating, we're also improving our eating habits and the eating behaviors because we are bringing that sense of awareness. We're less likely to emotionally eat or stress eat. We're better able to manage our portions because we're present with our meal.

In addition to these mind-body connections and these eating behaviors improvements, there's also physical benefits to eating mindfully. When we're eating mindfully (we'll touch on this later in the episode) but we are are slowing down the eating process, which helps to improve digestion, less bloating, less stomach discomfort. We're also more likely to choose nutritious foods because we are aware and we're paying attention. We have this presence when we're eating.

It also brings relaxation or stress management to your day. If you're not familiar with mindfulness in Episode 10, we did a deep dive into mindfulness and defined it a bit more, but it is a great tool for managing stress. Doing mindful eating and being present through your meals brings mindfulness into your day, which helps with managing stress, which that has a whole other load of health benefits, which we've talked about the last few episodes. So if you haven't listened to those episodes, I would recommend going back and reviewing through those on some of the benefits of managing stress and what that does for your body as well.

Based off of what we know about mindfulness, we know that it's a lot more than just thinking about something, it's a very active process. We'll go back to our definition of mindfulness, which is the non-judgmental awareness of the present moment.

I want to break down each of those pieces, the three things that stand out to me with that definition would be non-judgement, awareness, and present. And those are the three things that we'll talk about in terms of eating of what that might look like when we are bringing mindfulness into our eating habits.

So the first one being non-judgement, when we are mindfully eating, we are really observing, and not judging. This could mean not judging our food choices, not judging the experience, that it should be different, not judging that I should be eating something healthier, or I shouldn't be eating this meal. That also then ties into not judging our foods. This is where I think that mindful eating can take a lot of practice because we are so conditioned to believe foods are good or foods are bad. We have this dichotomy of how we classify our foods. When we're being mindful, foods are not good, and foods are not bad. Food is more a continuum; it just exists. Some foods may have a little bit more nutrition, some foods may be a little bit more fun. But no food can be classified into a category of this is 100% bad for you, or 100% good for you. (There is a caveat. Something can be 100% bad for you if it is poison or if you are allergic to it. If you have a literal allergic reaction, that is probably a food that you should consider bad for you). No food is 100% good either. Even with something that is very nutrient dense, we can overdo it. If that's the only thing that we are eating, we're not getting every nutrient that we need. We need a variety of foods. Just because something's good for you doesn't mean you need to eat it all the time either.

So when we are being mindful with our eating habits, we are dropping that judgment, dropping the self-criticism, dropping our thoughts about food, which can be hard to do. Giving yourself a clear playing field; you are just there to observe and to soak in that experience and see what you notice.

The second characteristic of mindfulness is awareness. There's a couple of different ways that this comes in when we're talking about mindful eating. One thing would be that we are aware of the physical sensations that we're having. This is often considered our hunger level, our fullness level, and what that actually feels like in our body.

• Where are you feeling hungry?

• Does your stomach growl?

• Do you get cranky or hangry?

We're also very aware of our thoughts and our emotions around food. This ties back to non-judgement and being aware when we start to catch ourselves saying, "I shouldn't eat this. This is bad for me". We're thinking of that, "okay, noting it. I'm aware that I have I'm having that thought about food". It's not good or bad to have these thoughts, but we're aware that we're having them

.

We're also aware of our emotions. So if we're feeling stressed, if we're feeling happy, if we're feeling excited, lonely, bored. All these things can tie into our food choices. Being aware of them is important when we're mindfully eating.

We're also bringing awareness to our choice of foods.

• What sounds good?

• What is aligned with the goals you have?

• What are your personal preferences?

• What food are you desiring? What do you want right now?

Awareness also shows up in our senses. Being physically aware, when you're eating, of the taste of the food that you're eating, the texture. What does it smell like? You're really aware of all the context surrounding that food, and the process of eating that food.

The third characteristic is present. So this is, in the moment, this is where a lot of what mindful eating looks like comes into play. You don't have a lot of distractions. You are eating slowly. You're eating and being in that moment, not thinking of the next thing that you need to do on your to do list, or all the terrible or wonderful things that happened throughout your day. It's very focused on that exact moment that you are living in.

Those three elements give us a definition of what mindfulness is. By describing all that, we can really see how active this process is. I's definitely more than just thinking, "Oh, I'm hungry", and then grabbing something and then be like, "Okay, I'm full". I think sometimes we boil it down to that. I've done that myself where it's like, "Okay, I'm going to, I feel a little hungry. Let me just grab something, okay, I'm satisfied" check! I mindfully ate today. And it's not like that. If we're really wanting to get the benefit, it takes that intentionality of carving out time to actually mindfully eat. It's not something that just happens on its own.

When we're mindfully eating, there's a couple of things that we can pay attention to, or a couple of questions that you can ask yourself to really flesh out this experience. Some things you might want to ask yourself would be:

• What does your hunger feel like? Getting in touch with those hunger and fullness cues.

• What taste or texture would be most satisfying to me right now?

• What am I actually craving or wanting or desiring? You might also consider how does that food choice align with the long term goals that I have? And if it doesn't quite align, what could I change about that food that would make it align a little bit more, but also still remain satisfying for me?

• How does it feel to eat that first bite? Are you so relieved to finally have something to eat? Were you so hungry that now it just feels good to eat something? Is that food so delicious that you just want to savor it?

• How would you describe that first bite of food?

• After you've been eating for a little bit, you may check in with yourself again and say, "okay, now I've had 20 bites, how satisfying is this meal still feeling?

• Is it still hitting the spot?

• Am I getting kind of tired of it?

• Am I starting to feel full?

• What physical sensations am I feeling at this point of the meal? You may feel that your stomach is starting to stretch a little bit, you may start to feel a little bit bored with the flavor. That same flavor that really excited you 20 bites ago may have lost its appeal a little bit.

These are the kinds of cues that we can start to pick up on that can help us to find that balance with our food choices.

Because this is such an active process, I also want to clarify that not every meal is going to be 100%. Mindful eating is not all or nothing, right? So it's not something where if you're going to eat mindfully, you have to sit down at every meal, you can't have any distractions, you can never be in a hurry. It's just not realistic. Just like with anything that we talked about, it's just practice. It's putting intentional effort into some of these things. When you're eating, when you have an opportunity to sit down at a meal without distractions and pay attention to your physical sensations. That's a benefit to you. And the more that you can carve out some time to practice that, the more natural it becomes when you don't have time to carve out and do this whole process. It becomes more a part of you. But it does take that intentionality of trying it and practicing it and giving it a go. It's not something that just you can say "oh, I'm going to be more mindful this week" and expect that now you you're always in touch with your food choices and that you will have perfect balance and everything and that you will never over eat again. It just is not an overnight change.

Okay, so if you're wanting to start with mindful eating, I want to give you three tips to get get started, three things that you can actually do that will help you to be more mindful in your eating practices.

The first thing that you can do is to slow down when you're eating. Chew your food. Really savor it. Sometimes you'll hear people talking about putting your utensil down between each bite, that can be helpful for slowing you down. Sit at a table, instead of just eating at the counter or grabbing something in the car, actually carve out time to slow down and have your meal. This helps to make time for mindfulness to ask yourself some of those questions that we've already reviewed, but it also has a physiological purpose. It takes time for your body to recognize that you're full. Sometimes when we eat so quickly, or on-the-go, we're not giving our body the chance to send those signals saying, "hey, we're good". Either we eat too quick, and then we've already eaten past the point of fullness before our brain registers that we're full. Or we're not really soaking in the experience enough to trigger that fullness system. When we're in such a rush, we just breeze through that process. We eat, we eat and then we're still eating, and then our brains like "oh, we were full 10 minutes ago". But we didn't give ourselves that time. Slowing down would be my first tip if you're wanting to eat mindfully.

The second tip would be to limit your distractions. This can be challenging. I know we live in a busy world, we have talked about this many times. But do your best to turn off the TV, to not eat at your desk at work, to take some time away. Give yourself something to focus on instead. Sometimes when we're taking all these distractions out, it's like "what am I supposed to do? Just sit here and eat?" And yes, but give yourself something to focus on. So look at your food. Look at the colors. Look at the texture. Feel how it feels in your mouth. How does it smell? What is the flavor? How would you describe it? Focus on the food and give that your main energy rather than the distractions of reading a book or watching TV or trying to multitask.

The third thing I would recommend starting with is to journal your eating context in the moment. This is something I use with all my clients. Before you eat, take just a moment to rate your hunger on a scale from 1 to 10. On this scale, 1 would be you are completely starving, like you may feel sick, you're so hungry. And 10 would be you're so full that it hurts. You might also feel sick at a 10, right? So your 1 is super hungry, and 10 is super full. Before you eat, take a moment to say "where am I on that scale?" You can also write down who you're with. Where are you? How are you feeling? What emotions are present for you? Take a look at the overall context of your meal. When you're done eating, you can revisit some of these same things. Has your emotion changed since you started eating? Where are you on that hunger fullness scale? (P.S. it's recommended to aim to stay between a four and a seven). Doing this style of journaling helps to bring awareness in the present moment.

Oftentimes, what I hear with journaling, or specifically calorie counting, a lot of clients go through their whole day, they don't think about the calorie counting, then at the end of the day, they're like, "oh shoot, I didn't put anything in my app!" They put everything in real quick, go to bed, and do the same thing the next day, which is helpful for knowing how many calories you ate. But in terms of developing awareness, it doesn't do much for you in the present moment. So doing this style of mindful journaling is definitely something that can help you to be present and be more in the moment when you are eating your meals.

If that is something that you are interested in, it is something I do with all my clients, I would be more than happy to chat about it with you feel free to send me an email or message me on Instagram. I'd love to just chat about it and see what it might look like for you to incorporate some of that into your routine or how you might get started with that.

So that is a bit about mindful eating, what it is, what it looks like and where you can start with it. If it is something you're interested in, I would encourage you to find one meal or one snack where you can practice putting some of these things into action. Don't feel like you have to change overnight and become the most mindful eater ever. That would be unbelievable to do that. I wish I could do that. But it is a process right.

Where can you carve out a moment of mindfulness to eat at one meal or one snack this week?

As always, thank you for joining me on the podcast this week and I cannot wait to talk to you again next week.

OUTRO MUSIC: Thanks for joining me on this episode of the compassionate wellness podcast. If this message resonated with you, please share it with someone you care about. I'd love to connect with you as well follow me on Instagram @alextreanor.coaching, or visit my website alextreanorcoaching.com. And as a reminder, Treanor spelled kind of goofy, it's T-R-E-A-N-O-R. For any references mentioned in this episode, be sure to check out the show notes. I hope you have a wonderful day and don't forget to make time for something you enjoy.