How to make peace with your food and stop dieting. (Part two)

Did the last post scare you? All those signs that you may be developing an eating disorder? …Scary stuff!

I watched an episode of Chicago Med (It should be known that I loooooovvvveee Medical Drama’s) and in that episode, a lady lost her life to anorexia.

Episode Summarized

The Senior psychiatrist was explaining to the resident psychiatrist that an anorexic patient would rather die than relinquish her control over food.

Even after she (the anorexic patient) and her doctor struck a hard bargain to accept a certain amount of calories in order to save her life, she went paranoid just as they were about to feed her through her IV and requested for her lawyer.

In the end, she went into some sort of crisis and passed away right before her parents.

Did you see that episode? It was a really emotional one for me. I felt really sad for her poor parents who had to watch their daughter die for fear of eating.

Anorexia, Bulimia, Binge Eating disorder and other unspecified eating disorders are severe mental illnesses. It’s not even within my scope of practice to deal with such patients. All I can do is catch you before you fall.

Did you know even Diana, Princess of Wales, publicly admitted to her battle with Bulimia when her marriage went into crisis? She said something in her broke when her husband put his hand around her waist during courtship and said “A little chubby around the middle” (I may or may not have paraphrased that quote)

And when he started seeing another woman, she found solace in food.

This just tells you that no one is outside the grasp of these eating disorders. They creep up on you and before you know it, your whole life revolves around food and your body image.

Which is why people are so depressed and will do anything to lose weight. They will drink any tea, spend a fortune on cleanses, pills and fad diets.

What they don’t realize, is that food is not the enemy. Even Junk Food. The real enemy is your mind and feeling out of control around food.

This brings us to today’s topic: Mindful Eating.

In the last post, I explained that somewhere between normal eating and eating disorders lie disordered eating and mindful eating.

I used this image to show the eating pattern spectrum.

But Before I talk about what Mindful Eating is, I’ll share with you what Mindful Eating isn’t.

Mindful Eating is not:

1. A Rat Race: This is the suffer now for future benefit approach and is the most predominant attitude of most people who want to lose weight or get healthy. It’s also the approach that will most likely increase your chances of developing and eating disorder or it’s little brother – disordered eating.

2. Nihilistic: Nihilism is when you neither enjoy the moment (or meal in this case) nor do you have a sense of future benefit. It’s like eating a slightly rotten pizza.

3. Hedonistic: Hedonism is when you give into present pleasure while ignoring the potential consequences of your actions. This is where Normal Eating falls. When you’re eating normally, you simply don’t pay any attention to your food and the effect it has on your body. You give into every craving.

Mindful Eating is:

1. About the way we eat not what we eat.

2. Flexible, healthy, guilt free and achieves health, performance and body composition goals.

Mindful Eating is focusing your attention and being aware of the present moment to help perceive or anticipate habitual, harmful and unsatisfying behaviors in order to disconnect from them.

Of course, the opposite of mindful eating is mindless eating. When you eat mindlessly, you eat without being aware of the moment or listening to your body. Examples are: Eating in traffic, eating and watching TV.

Prior to working with us, most of our clients couldn’t remember what they had eaten during the day or how many times they had eaten by the time the day was over.

And that’s because they weren’t paying any attention in the first place! And I don’t blame them…

It is so easy to eat mindlessly because It requires absolutely no brain work and humans are wired to avoid work.

Especially now, when attention spans are getting shorter and shorter… (hurrah! If you made it to the end of this post without leaving to respond to a message or check out an Instagram notification)

We’ve been trained to respond to external triggers like the smell of food (think freshly popped corn or freshly baked bread…OMG!) , just being around food, eating out of habit or to avoid waste rather than in response to real hunger.

Heck, most of us can’t even differentiate thirst from boredom or imagined hunger.

Once we feel the slightest bit of discomfort, our bodies immediately register it as hunger and just like a robot, we reach for the closest thing.

It takes mindfulness to stop and ask yourself questions like:

1. The last time you had a glass water.

2. Am I bored?

3. Is this meal even worth it?

By the way, these questions are some of the mindful eating techniques you can practice whenever you feel the urge to eat.

Some other techniques include:

1. Eating slowly.

2.Putting cutlery down between mouthfuls.

Asking questions like:

1. Is this meal getting me closer to my goals?

2. Am I eating too fast?

3. Will this food or drink nourish my body?

4. Do I really need another helping? If yes, why don’t I wait 20 mins before eating some more.

5. You could also try self regulation techniques like starting a food journal.

Don't ever think Mindful Eating is about making the right choices All Of THE TIME.

Mindful Eating is about the way we eat and not what we eat. This is why I can totally love baking and still be a health coach.

Mindful Eating is eating all of the things you love (and don’t love) in such a way that it works for you and not against you.

This means that:

1. Giving into cravings every once in a while is totally okay.

2. Occasionally Having some foods just because they taste good isn’t such a terrible thing after all.

3. Eating more on some days and less on some others is fine too.

It’s amazing how eating takes up most of our day. Thinking about it, preparing it, eating it and even recovering from it (think after a weekend of visiting family over the holidays… Gosh! so much to eat and drink!).

Obsessing over food not only creates unnecessary stress but takes up more of the time we could have spent enjoying our lives and being productive.

Treating food as a small part of a balanced life is the way to go!

So whatever healthy eating style you choose, the trick is to enjoy it because that’s the only way you can stick with it. Find what works for you and tweak it such that it’s both enjoyable and purposeful.

Have a little time to spare? Take our short Beginner Crash Course on Nutrition. IT'S FREE!!

Xoxo.

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