Episode 33: Three Common Myths About Mindful Eating That May Be Keeping You Stuck

"Shouldn’t mindful eating come naturally to me? I don’t have to track my food, right? I can eat anything I want as long as I do it ‘mindfully’."

There are A LOT of myths and misconceptions about mindful eating. This week we’re discussing (and debunking!) three of the most common myths so that you can become a more mindful eater.

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.

Hello, my wonderful, wonderful, wonderful friend. Thank you so much for joining me for today's episode of The Compassionate Wellness Podcast. I am fully aware that I say that every time but I truly and sincerely mean that. Thank you for letting me tag along for a few minutes on your day today. I hope that we are doing something fun. But you know what, if we are cleaning your kitchen together, then that's cool, too. I'm glad to be doing that with you. So thank you for inviting me along today. I am super excited about today's topic, and I know that you are busy. So let's dive right in.

When I start working with a new client on mindful eating, one of the first things that I asked them is to tell me what they believe mindful eating is. I want to know what it looks like, what it feels like, what would make it seem successful in their eyes, really diving into the concept as a whole. And the goal here, the reason that I asked this is to really get a feel for what this client understands mindful eating to be. There is so much information out there and we are constantly soaking things in from the people around us, the messages that we hear, that it's important to recognize that everyone has a different understanding of mindful eating. And there are actually a lot of myths out there that I hear when hearing from different people of what their perspective is. As a coach, I feel it's really important for me to understand where that client is coming from and to also get on the same page and kind of break through some of these myths so that we are working towards the same goal, with the same understanding of knowing what direction we're headed.

So today's episode we're going to be diving into and also debunking three of the most common myths that I hear about mindful eating.

The first myth is that it should feel easy and natural. That if it's mindful, it will just come to you. And let's be real mindful eating does sound like this very graceful, very sophisticated concept. And it can definitely be that. But I do like to think of it as being a little bit like ballet. When you see it in action, it is beautiful. And it's seemingly simple. It looks so natural to somebody who has been doing ballet for years, right, they make it look easy. But behind the scenes, it takes a lot of work. It feels very hard, long before it feels easy. And it takes those years of practice to get to that point where it looks graceful and feels graceful and natural. You have to spend the time building your calluses, breaking in your shoes, doing those crazy stretches, where your leg is way up in the air. All of those things are important to be able to develop the skills that then when you perform it looks so beautiful and easy.

Mindful eating is very similar. It requires developing those skills. It's not just oh, hey, I'll be more mindful. Which is what I hear a lot of times, right? Like, oh, I'll just be mindful, I'll be aware. And that sounds simple. But building awareness is huge. And so it's learning how to build that awareness, which is developing processes. It's changing how we think about things. It's practicing over and over again. It's work, just like ballet is work.

So what I would say about this is don't be surprised if it takes effort. It's going to take effort. I'll also say that if it feels easy, and you're also not really feeling a big difference, then you're probably not doing it right. And that's really hard for me to say because it's hard for me to say that you're doing it wrong. But there's likely a way for you to do it better by using the skills and making it a little bit harder so that it has a better outcome for you. The good news here is that it's hard because it's hard, not because you're bad at it. You've probably heard me say that a million times. You can probably fill in the blank with that phrase at this point. You can't become this graceful mindful eater without giving yourself some grace in that process.

The second myth that I hear very often is that mindful eating means that I don't need to track my food. And this one might be a little bit controversial. So here's what I'm going to say about it. Mindful eating does require you to have a high degree of awareness about your habits, your routines, and being present. It is being in tune with your body, with your needs with your wants. And one of the most universal recommendations for building awareness, when it comes to changing habits and routines, is implementing some form of tracking. You may have heard the phrase what you track changes, and I'm just gonna say that one is pretty, pretty, pretty true. That's pretty true. Because when we're tracking, we are having to force ourselves to slow down enough to track and to build awareness in that moment. So when you're trying to understand your body, your needs, your wants, your desires, your emotions, it's valuable to have some form of objective information that you can see that you can look at, that you can review and find patterns and really learn from, and that's what tracking does for us.

In my coaching program, I encourage all of my clients to track their foods. However, I also am very clear that this does not mean you have to track calories. I want to add that in there. Because I think oftentimes one of the reasons that clients come to me with an interest in exploring mindful eating is because they've had terrible experiences with tracking calories with food, nutrition, dieting, this whole diet culture that is so prevalent in our society. And we want freedom from that I don't want to have to track calories and measure every detail and stress about my food intake. For some people counting calories can be really triggering, not for everybody, but it can definitely be triggering. And it can also lead to disordered eating tendencies as well, which is something that is really important to be mindful of.

So when we're talking about tracking, I want to be very clear that we're not necessarily meaning counting calories. If that works for you, that's an option. But if you don't want to count calories, there are other ways to track your food that can help you with building mindful awareness and being more mindful and in tune with your body through the eating process.

So as you're considering what tracking might look like, I would recommend that you make it a safe place for you to collect information in a meaningful way, information that's actually going to help you and be able to inform your decision so that you can continue progressing with the goals that you have that might look different depending on what your goals are. But having some way to track it is going to be beneficial for you.

The last myth that I'll go over today is that focusing on satisfaction or enjoyment just means eating whatever sounds good, right? Now I can eat whatever I want, because I'm just enjoying it and being satisfied. And that's mindful eating. Oh, this is a doozy. This is a big misconception. And I do think that this sometimes gets lost in my own messaging even because I do talk a lot about building enjoyment into your routine, and making routines that feel satisfying and fun. And that's not always doing just the thing that's fun on the surface level. Part of being mindful is being able to be in the present moment while also zooming out to maintain awareness of the whole picture. We aren't getting caught up in emotions or in cravings, we're really staying present with ourselves while eating. And when I say with ourselves, what I mean is the self who cares about your wellness and your goals and being able to live a long, healthy life. The self who can make room for fun foods and chooses them with a purpose and at appropriate times.

Eating whatever you want, whenever you want, however much you want; all of that sounds very enjoyable and satisfying, but it's on the superficial level. When we're talking about mindfulness, we're talking big picture of what truly brings enjoyment to you. We are talking about what truly will satisfy you at your core of you as a human not just you who wants this dessert that's sitting in front of you right now. That might mean having the oven fresh chocolate chip cookie while chatting with your best friend in your kitchen. That might be truly the satisfying thing that honors your core values. It also might mean ordering the side of steamed broccoli instead of mac and cheese because you know you have a long day ahead of you and you really need to have the energy to do all these activities that you have planned.

So when practicing mindful eating, we're very aware of our emotions, our wants, our needs, our desires, our body, our hunger level, and the circumstances. And we're taking all this information in to make the decision that's going to make our core self proud and happy and satisfied. Focusing on satisfaction and enjoyment is about staying in touch with yourself and your deep desires even in the face of stressful meetings in the face of busy schedules, hard to handle emotions, it's being able to navigate all of that in a mindful present, non judgmental way.

So just to recap, those three points that we talked about today:

1. Mindful eating may not feel easy and natural at the beginning, it takes a developing skills and practice and effort to be able to do it.

2. Mindful eating does sometimes require you to track your foods in some way, although you can do that in a way that works best for you.

3. Mindful eating is focusing on that deep satisfaction and enjoyment and being able to honor what's best for you in the moment, and your future self as well. There are plenty other myths out there, these are three that stood out to me.

The good news here is that I can help you crush through all of these, and many more of the myths. I can help you to get to a place where you feel graceful and natural with your mindful eating. Yes, mindful eating takes practice and requires you to learn skills, but I know those skills, and I can teach them to you.

Yes, tracking your foods is key to building awareness. But I can give you tools to learn how to track without the judgment, I literally have them built into my coaching program to just give to you to put into practice and start building that awareness right now.

And yes, mindful eating does require you to be clear on your deep desires and to be able to stay in tune with that, but that's literally what we dive into in our very first coaching session is getting to know what does that deep self truly honor and value and what are going to be those guiding principles on this journey that we're on.

If you are interested in diving into mindful eating and working with me in my coaching program, book a call with me, it's totally free. It's really fun. It's no pressure, we can chat about it, see if it's something I can help you with.

And if it's not something that I can help you with, I can give you resources to point you in the right direction. I hope that this message brought you some clarity today on mindful eating, hope it helped define it a little bit more in what it actually looks like.

Can you do me a huge, HUGE favor and share this podcast episode with someone who you love who might need to hear this message as well or who is curious about mindful eating. And if you don't have someone in mind, maybe you could rate it or leave me a review so that people who look at this Podcasts can find it and know what messages that we're talking about and how it resonates with you.

I hope that you have a wonderful, wonderful week. Thank you again so much for joining me. Hopefully we got some kitchen cleaning done, if that's what we're up to today, and if we're doing something fun or driving somewhere. Thanks for the ride. Have a great week and I will look forward to talking with 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.