Want to achieve or maintain a healthy weight in 2015 without restriction and deprivation? I’m not always a fan of what’s trending but all the talk about mindful eating has me excited! How many times have you distractedly eaten your meal and then thought, “I finished that? I don’t even remember!” Well okay, we have kids so probably most of the time. Fully focused eating might be tough, but what if you put down your smart phone and at least made a concerted effort to savor your food, pay attention to the taste, and pay attention to your fullness cues (just like you teach your children!)? Eating mindfully takes practice but makes it whole lot easier to avoid unwanted weight gain. In addition, changing the triggers in your home or workplace to create “The easiest environment to make the healthiest choices,” makes it oh so much easier to make healthy choices your default, especially as busy moms! (As a nutrition/fitness specialist, this is a mantra I tell my clients- why make it difficult for yourself and test your willpower?)
Getting Started: 3 Simple Steps to More Mindful Eating
- When you sit down to eat, pay attention to each bite and the flavor of the food. If you catch yourself eating distractedly, put down your fork, do what you need to do, and then return to mindful eating.
- Stop several times during your meal and focus on your hunger/fullness – Are you still feeling hunger? Is that feeling dissipating? Adjust your portion accordingly to stop eating before you are full.
- Be aware of hunger vs. appetite; I “need a cookie” doesn’t mean your body actually needs it, it means you experienced a trigger (memory of a great cookie, the scent of one etc.) that triggered your appetite. Take a few minutes to decide what you really need and if that cookie is still important. If you’re hungry, what healthy choice could fulfill that hunger? If you choose to have it, enjoy each bite – guilt free. If you are savoring it, there’s no need to have 2 or 3, or the entire box.
Getting Started: 3 Simple Steps to a Healthy Eating Environment
- Take an honest look at your post holiday kitchen. Lots of treat leftovers? Freeze them and forget, “I just need to finish it up so that it’s not in the house anymore.” Binging to “get rid of the food” does not help you or anyone else.
- What’s in stock? What do you see when you open the fridge? (Stop, go check right now… do you see leftover holiday treats?) If you don’t have healthy nourishing food front and center (veggies, fruit, yogurt, salad etc), shop or do some simple prep. This is KEY to a busy mom’s healthy eating success!
- If healthy meal planning is time consuming, you won’t do it, right? Make a list of your family’s 10 go-to easy prep healthy meals. Need ideas? I love eatingwell.com, cookinglight.com, 100daysofrealfood.com.
Need some more inspiration? Check out these books:
Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More than We Think
How will you eat more mindfully this year?
