Let's ask ourselves the question,
Are you an emotional eater?
Do you remember what it was like during lockdown?
How was your diet?
For me,
I quickly put on quite a bit of weight.
I was buying all the wrong things.
Rusks,
Chocolates,
Condensed milk.
And half of me just didn't care about how I looked like.
Like it was the end of the world,
Right?
I mean,
Who cares if you're overweight when it happens?
Because there was a lot of fear.
And eating was a way of compensating or surviving through a terrible period.
And I thought,
Oh,
Well,
If it all goes back to normal,
Then I'll go back to the gym and I'll work out.
But now I'm thinking,
Well,
There's so much going on in the world.
And I'm just not going to worry about my diet at this particular time.
And we had all sorts of excuses for habitual behavior.
And certainly,
COVID-19 was a big excuse for all of us.
Did you notice that you put on weight?
I'm sure most people did.
But there are psychological reasons for this and very ancient reasons as well.
When we felt under threat as ancient humans for survival,
We would eat to make sure that we were sustained.
But the psychological reasons for some of this behavior is that when the body is feeling stressed,
It produces cortisol,
Which is a stress chemical.
And when our body's pumped full of this cortisol,
It pushes us to overeat.
And not just any kinds of foods,
But foods that will give us energy for the fight.
Remember the fight flight as ancient humans.
So these foods will be high in fat and sugar.
And that's why we crave that.
We crave those foods more when we are highly,
Highly stressed.
So it's a bit of a vicious circle.
And I'm not a dietician by any means,
But we are aligning our mental health with our relationship to food.
So mindful eating is a technique that can help you gain control over your eating habits.
And it's been shown to promote weight loss and reduce binge eating and just generally to make you feel better.
So mindfulness is really a form of meditation that helps you recognize and deal with your emotions in a positive way.
And whatever physical sensations are arising in the body,
It really connects the mind and body.
And it can be used to treat many disorders,
Including depression,
Anxiety,
Eating disorders,
And so on.
So mindful eating is using that tool,
That wonderful tool of mindfulness to where we reach a state of full attention to our experiences,
To our cravings,
All those physical cues when you're eating or approaching your meal.
So basically,
It helps us to eat slower.
This is what mindful eating looks like.
Slow it down without distraction,
Listening to those hunger cues,
And eat when you feel full.
So we can distinguish between non-real hunger cravings and real hunger cravings.
So sometimes emotions can really push us and trigger us into overeating and eating all the wrong things.
So mindful eating,
We engage all our senses,
We notice the colors,
The smells,
The sounds as we eat,
The textures,
The flavors,
Everything comes,
All your senses come into that.
And we maintain our overall health and well-being.
And we notice also the effect of certain foods.
If I eat a salad,
How's that going to make me feel?
Or if I eat a cheeseburger and chips,
How's that going to make me feel an hour later?
Also,
We appreciate our food and we feel grateful for what is in front of us.
So we make healthy,
More conscious choices.
And it might also affect when we go shopping and what do we fill our trolley with,
Knowing how certain foods can make us feel.
So why should you try mindful eating?
Well,
Today's fast-paced society tempts people with an abundance of food choices.
On top of that,
Distractions have shifted attention away from the actual act of eating towards our televisions,
Our computers,
And our smartphones.
Eating has become a mindless act,
Often done very quickly,
Something to just get it over and done with.
And this can be problematic since it takes your brain up to 20 minutes to realize that you are full.
If you eat too fast,
The fullness signal may not arrive until you have eaten too much.
And this is common in binge eating.
Every Friday night,
I order a wonderful delivery from the Indian restaurant,
Paneer Makhani,
With a garlic naan bread.
And one evening I was watching the Olympics and I was so engrossed in the Olympics that I finished my paneer and I finished the naan and I didn't even taste it.
I realized I hadn't even tasted it and I was so disgusted with myself.
In fact,
I ate all the food that was on the plate.
And I never really eat all of it because I know I won't sleep well because it's too much.
But I wasn't there.
I missed out on that delicious meal.
I felt robbed.
By eating mindfully,
We restore our attention,
We slow it down,
And we make it an intentional act instead of an automatic one.
We increase our recognition of those hunger cues and our fullness cues and we're able to distinguish between emotional and true physical hunger.
And then we can bring awareness into our triggers that make us want to eat.
What is irritating?
What is upsetting me that makes me want to eat?
That's mindful connection.
Even though we might not necessarily be actually hungry.
So by knowing these triggers,
We can create a space and then we can choose how we want to respond rather than react.
And then just giving ourselves that freedom and that time to choose how we're going to react or to choose how we're going to respond.
It's really well known that most weight loss programs don't actually work in the long term.
And they say that around 85% of people with obesity that do lose the weight,
Then put the weight back on within a few years and sometimes exceed the weight that they were originally at.
Binge eating,
Emotional eating,
External eating in response to cravings have been shown to link to weight gain,
Excessive weight gain.
And this weight regain,
As I've just said,
Chronic exposure to stress,
Burnout may also play a large role in overeating and obesity.
The vast majority of studies agree that mindful eating help you to lose weight by changing your eating behaviours and reducing stress.
So perhaps we should get into a mindful eating practice.
