All posts by : Ye Ting Tan

Mindfulness is a powerful way to bring balance into every aspect of how we eat. It cultivates inner wisdom – awareness of how our body and mind are reacting; and outer wisdom – making wiser use of nutrition information to satisfy your needs and preferences.

Here are my mindful eating technique to use when you want a “snack or dessert” so bad. Not all of these tips or strategies resinate to you, but try a few and see how they work.

STOP FOR A MOMENT

Bring your awareness to your breath, slow down by taking 2-3 deeper breaths. You can close your eyes if you want. Tune your awareness into what is leading you to want to eat. Are you physically hungry?

How hungry you are?

How do you know that?

Are you just stressed? or bored?

Perhaps you just got home from work and saw a box of chocolate left out on the kitchen counter?

There might be several triggers to your urge. Simple notice what they are. Well, if you are physically hungry, give yourself full permission to have a snack or treat.

CHOOSE YOUR SNACK OR DESSERT MINDFULLY 

Consider what is calling you.

What would be satisfying ?

What would you enjoy, to help you relax, bring comfort, or hold you over until next meal?

Do you want something sweet, something crispy, something savoury?

Are the chocolate calling you? Or do you really want some cookies?

Give some thought to this, because you will be more satisfied and less likely to eat more than if you’d just grabbed the first thing in front of you.

USE OUTER WISDOM 

Thinking about how much you would eat? One good rule is to eat about 100 kcal per hour to sustain you until the next time you eat. That is about how much your body will burn during that time, and it is a way to give yourself permission to simply enjoy your snack, rather than feeling guilty about it.

COMBINE WITH INNER WISDOM 

Savour the food, eating it slowly and without doing anything else. Minimize distractions, such as watching TV or checking emails.

STAY AT NOW 

Most of the time, our thoughts wander somewhere other than where we are in the moment. Perhaps we are preoccupied with what happened an hour ago, stressed over what we need to do tomorrow, or worried about what might happen next week. Mindfulness encourages us to notice these preoccupations, and then to gently bring ourselves back to the NOW.

BE RELAX AND FLEXIBLE 

Use this approach at a snack time that occurs regularly and when you are alone, so you can fully focus on your experiences. You can then use these practices almost anytime you have an urge to eat. Explore how the quality of your experiences of food and eating shift when you bring a mindful, accepting, and open awareness to them.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also interested in reading about 7 Types of Hunger.

Last week, I talked about “Mindful Eating” and reviewed some research that showed a mindful eating can establish healthy eating habit. However, this has yet to answer the question how do you eat mindfully?

To start understanding the concept of mindful eating, you need to know the 7 types of hungers. We eat for many reasons – because we’re hungry, stressed, or feeling happy, because we feel like we deserve a cake or simply because it’s your lunchtime.

Eating mindfully is about expanding our awareness around eating habits, so that we can make a more conscious decision of what to put in our mouth and when.

According to pediatrician and mindful eating proponent Jan Chozen-Bays, MD, author of the book, “Mindful Eating: A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food”. She reviewed in her book that there are 7 types of hunger relating to different parts of our anatomy – the eyes, nose, mouth, stomach, cells, mind and heart.

Once we are more aware of these different types of hunger and their reasons, we can respond consciously and more appropriately to satisfy them.

EYE HUNGER 

Our eyes see delicious foods and send a message to our brain saying, “We’re hungry for that”. The eye can convince the mind to override the signal from the stomach and body, even when we are not hungry.

To satisfy eye hunger, eat without distraction. You can feast your eyes on the food before you put it in your mouth. If you mindlessly wolf your dinner down while watching TV, you’re wasting an opportunity to really appreciate it.

NOSE HUNGER 

Our sense of smell is closely tied to our sense of taste, such that the “taste” or “flavour” of foods is nearly entirely the “smell” of it. Smell exerts a potent affect on our subconscious mind. You might be familiar with the intense aroma when you walk past the pastry shop at the mall. The powerful smell draws you in and is nearly irresistible, even though you may not be hungry at the time.

To satisfy nose hunger, practice sensitizing yourself to the smell of your food, isolated from taste, by taking a pause before eating to really take in the aromas.  

MOUTH HUNGER 

Our mouth has a desire for pleasurable sensations such as different tastes and textures. The mouth prefers variety in these sensations and can easily become bored. If we are not paying attention while eating, the mouth will not be satisfied, and will continue to ask for more food, which can cause mindless overeating.

To satisfy mouth hunger, increase your awareness around the flavours and textures in your mouth.

STOMACH HUNGER  

When our stomach is hungry it can signal us with rumbling, growling, or with an empty feeling in the abdomen. If we are in the habit of eating several times daily, and we miss a meal, our stomach will alert us of its hunger. It takes practice to sense when a grumbling stomach means actual hunger. Often, we can confuse the sensation with other feelings that affect our stomach such as depression and anxiety. If we feed depression with “junk food”, then get more depressed about our diet.

To satisfy stomach hunger, listen to the stomach hunger cues and start to familiarize yourself with them. Try to delay eating when you feel hungry and become aware of the sensations (make observation). You can also assess your hunger on a hunger scale from 1-10 before a meal, then halfway through check in again and do the same.

CELLULAR HUNGER 

Our body can give us various signals when we experience cellular hunger such as faintness, dizziness, irritability, a sudden loss of energy, or strong desires for certain foods. Cellular hunger is one of the hardest types of hunger to sense, even though it is the original reason for eating. When we were children, we intuitively knew when we needed to eat, and what our body was craving. But over time, we lose our ability.

Through mindfulness, it’s possible to become more aware of our body’s cravings for specific nutrients and develop some of the “inner wisdom” we had when we were children.

To learn to listen to cellular hunger is the primary skill of mindful eating” – Jan Chozen-Bays

MIND HUNGER 

Modern society has made us very anxious eaters. Constantly being influenced by the current fat diet or the latest nutritional guidelines, such as “Sugar is bad for me”.  The mind can hinder our ability to “listen” to what the body needs (our internal hunger cues).  This type of hunger is based on our thoughts.

To satisfy mind hunger, being mindfulness can help calm the mind and tune in to other cues our body is sending us.

HEART HUNGER 

This is based on our desire to be loved and cared for. We crave certain comfort food because we were given it as a child, or because we’ve associated it in our mind as a treat for when we’re feeling down. Many people experience heart hunger and attempt to satisfy it with food (emotional eating), which, though sometimes helpful in the short term, can’t always fill the hole in our heart.

To satisfy heart hunger, we need to find the intimacy or comfort our heart is craving. Try observing/noticing the emotions that you’ve been feeling just before you have an urge to eat that chocolate as you might be able to find other way to satisfy them, such as calling a friend or having a cup of herbal tea or a hot bath.

BOTTOM LINE

We can eat mindfully by assessing each of the types of hunger whenever we have the desire to eat. The goal is try to be mindful of what and how you eat, feast with your eyes, take in the aroma and savour every flavour – then you’ll be truly satisfied.

In next week blogpost, I will discuss mindless eating, and how to avoid this common obstacle to healthy eating.

The concept of Mindful Eating has been gaining popularity over the past couple years. You may hear your dietitian talking about it or your girlfriend who are trying to lose some weight doing this mindful eating practice. But what exactly does it mean to be a mindful eater?

In my culture, December to January are all about celebrations. One holiday party followed by another…and another until Chinese New Year !! Whether you want to avoid overeating and gaining those extra weight, you need to control your blood sugar (if you have diabetes), or you simply wish to consume only what your body requires, the holiday season can make that goal challenging.

MINDFUL EATING MIGHT HELP YOU REACH THE GOAL 

I use mindful eating strategies in my dietetic practice and personal life. I found that it helps me to rediscover a healthy and joyful relationship with foods.

Mindfulness is a powerful way to bring balance into every aspect of how we eat. It involves cultivating a combination of “inner wisdom” (awareness of how our body and mind are responding) and “outer wisdom” (engaging nutrition information and recommendations to meet your own personal needs and preferences).

Mindfulness refers to the practice of being aware and in the moment, without judgement.

HEALTH BENEFITS OF MINDFUL EATING 

• Help with weight management (here, here, here)
• Help diners feel more in control in their eating (here)
• Reduced disordered eating pattern (here, here)
• Improve glycemic control for those living with diabetes (here)
• Reduced perceived stress (here)

BOTTOM LINE

Yes, Mindful Eating has many health benefits, however, it is very challenging to practice. It takes lot of work and dedication to completely in tune with your hunger and satiety signals.

Stay tune for next week blogpost “Steps to Eat Mindfully“.

Did you know that I offer personalized nutrition counselling for kids and families? If this is something you’s like to learn more about, please Contact Me.