It is 6pm. You had a busy day at work or with your family and are longing to sit down to a tasty dinner. You are hungry and preoccupied and polish off the food you hastily prepared earlier while mentally ticking off items on your to-do list. When you get to the last one, you suddenly realise your plate is empty but you are still holding a now redundant knife and fork.
We all engage in this kind of unconscious speed eating at times when we simply wolf down our food without even thinking about what we are eating. Our aim is to satisfy our appetite before moving on to the next task.
Busy schedules and hectic lifestyles are often to blame for people eating on the run, skipping meals, or gulping down food. Many people hurriedly eat breakfast as they dash out the door to work, have lunch at their desk, and have dinner in front of the television at night. If someone were to ask them what they ate, they would probably struggle to remember. Many of us do not have or take the time, to enjoy a full meal.
It is not uncommon these days to constantly graze on food, often when we are bored, and sometimes when we are not even hungry. We eat for reasons other than to satisfy our appetite. These may be to meet emotional needs, to relieve stress, or cope with unpleasant feelings such as anxiety, sadness, loneliness, or boredom.
With the hustle and bustle of day-to-day life, it can be challenging to eat both with intention and attention, which is what mindful eating is all about. It means being aware of what you are eating or drinking, noticing how it makes you feel, and how your body responds to it.
Research shows that mindful or intuitive eating is beneficial on a number of fronts. It can lead to increased awareness of how and why we eat and help us have a more satisfying eating experience. Practising mindful eating can help to bring back an appreciation and enjoyment of food, according to the local heart and stroke charity, Croí.
Mindful eating is often described as eating with intention (caring for yourself ) and attention (noticing and enjoying your food and its effects on the body ). It is a simple-to-learn life skill which can lead people to enjoy a satisfying, healthy and enjoyable relationship with food.
It is important to note that mindful eating is not a diet – it is about the way we eat, not what we eat. Mindful eating can help manage weight, control food cravings, and improve eating habits.
Aisling Harris, a cardiac and weight management dietitian and certified intuitive eating counsellor with Croí, which is running a Zoom course on intuitive eating later this month, said it will help people move away from external food rules. It will teach them how to eat in response to their body's natural appetite and biological cues.
"It can help you to become more in tune with your body's internal hunger and fullness signals, move away from the 'all or nothing' mindset, and help improve body appreciation and satisfaction. It can also lead to more enjoyment from movement and exercising and more satisfaction from food. When the principles of intuitive eating are put into practice, it can help improve health markers such as blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood glucose control."
If you have a difficult relationship with food, learning to eat more mindfully and intuitively can help you feel more in control around it and feel less guilt about your food choices, she said.
Here are her top tips for getting started:
Learning to eat more mindfully
1. Eat foods that make you feel good, physically and mentally. For some people, this could be a creamy hot chocolate while watching your favourite movie or a bun with a friend. These foods might nourish our mind and our mood. Other times, you might crave a piece of fruit, an extra helping of vegetables with your dinner, or have an alcohol-free day because you feel your body is craving this. There are no 'good' or 'bad foods', just food. Equally, we are not 'good' or 'bad' depending on the foods we eat. Removing feelings of shame or guilt around food gives us so much more freedom and ultimately, we are more likely to choose a balanced diet.
2. Check in with your hunger and fullness signals. Sometimes, we can become out of touch with our hunger and fullness signals and not trust ourselves to know when we are hungry or full. This can often be a result of years of dieting, following restrictive meal plans, and being told exactly what and when to eat. No wonder we can be scared to trust ourselves. However, we can learn to connect with these signals again, according to Ms Harris. You can do this by regularly using the hunger scale. Ideally you would like to be around a four before a meal and a six afterwards. Look out for hunger signals such as your stomach grumbling, constant thoughts about food, low energy levels, feeling faint, or irritable. It is also important to be aware of your fullness signals, particularly when we tend to be surrounded by endless supplies of food. We can override the feeling of fullness and intentionally eat more, sometimes to the point of feeling uncomfortably full. Check in with yourself while you are eating and if you are beginning to feel satisfied, stop. You can always come back and finish the meal later if you are still hungry.
3. Touch base with your mood. If you are craving something to eat, but you do not actually feel hungry, check to see if this is more of an emotional hunger rather than a physical one. Often, we crave certain foods in response to emotions such as stress, boredom, loneliness, tiredness, etc. Ask yourself: 'What emotion am I feeding?'. Over time, this helps us to separate physical and emotional hunger and can help us to learn other ways of coping with our emotions. Incorporating some gentle exercise into your routine, become absorbed in your favourite hobby, or taking 10 minutes to practice mindfulness will all help, too.
4. Ditch the weighing scales. Aisling Harris stressed that your value is not measured by a number on the scales. Your health cannot be measured by that either. "If, like a lot of people I work with, you find the scales can affect your mood and your behaviours then get rid of it. Focus on measuring your progress in other ways - are you noticing an improvement in your mood, energy levels, sleep, fitness? Do you feel like you are developing a better routine and healthier habits? Have you noticed improvements in your blood pressure, cholesterol, or diabetes control? These are the ways you should measure your progress, not by a number on a weighing scales."
5. Be gentle with yourself. Find a way of eating and exercising that is sustainable, that does not restrict foods, and does not make us feel guilty or ashamed when we inevitably go 'off plan' is a much healthier and more effective approach. Why not try to set goals that are realistic and achievable? For example, aim to start eating three meals per day and not skipping lunch, try to get one less takeaway weekly, and aim to go for at least three half hour walks each week. These are much more realistic goals than ones like saying you will cut out all sweets, chocolate, takeaways, cook all meals from scratch, and exercise every day for the next year. Do not set yourself up to fail.
Intuitive eating programme
Are you tired of dieting, food rules, and constantly obsessing over what you eat? Do you want to rebuild a healthy and sustainable relationship with food, free from guilt, and restriction? If so, Croí's eight week Intuitive Eating Group course will guide you on a transformative journey toward a more mindful and nourishing way of eating.
The eight week online programme, which costs €100, will take place from 7pm to 8.30pm on Tuesday evenings from May 14. It will be delivered via Zoom by Aisling Harris, who will focus on the 10 principles of intuitive eating. The event is open to people from outside Galway, also. It will involve a small group (15 to 20 people ) to allow for comfortable and open discussion between participants.
"There will be time for discussion between the group, where participants can share their previous experiences (often related to diet culture, weight stigma, body image issues, etc. )," explained Ms Harris. "It is also a space for people to question and challenge the intuitive eating principles. As a dietitian, I can also advise people who may have medical conditions that are impacted by diet, and best advise how they can practice intuitive eating. Each week, participants also receive a summary email and 'homework' to consolidate that week's principle, which is then discussed at the start of the next session. The sessions are not recorded to encourage open and honest discussion. Don't worry if you are not yet comfortable speaking in a group, there is no pressure to speak so don't let that put you off!"
The programme is most suitable for chronic dieters, emotional eaters, people tired of food rules and restrictions, and those seeking long-term health (rather than short-term weight loss ). It is also aimed at anyone who is keen to improve their overall wellbeing, develop a healthier relationship with food, and break free from the cycle of dieting and food guilt.
For further information, email [email protected] or call (091 ) 544310 and ask for her. If you would like to book a one-to-one assessment with Aisling Harris before, during, or after the programme, this can be arranged. A 60 minute session is available for participants at a discounted rate of €50.
