When you're busy it's easy to develop unhealthy, unconscious eating habits. Here's how to break the cycle.
How many times do you sit down to eat in front of the TV or your laptop and before you know it you're finished and you haven't even tasted a bite? Today's busy schedules mean that for many of us, sitting down to a well-prepared meal at a table and taking the time to savour every mouthful rarely, if ever, happens. Eating mindlessly could be leading to bad habits and weight gain, but there is a solution. Susan Hepburn, author of Hypnodiet (Piatkus), says eating mindfully helps to reprogram your mind.
"Mindfulness is a highly effective psychological tool, gaining ground both in popular culture and mainstream psychology," she says. "Mindful eating encourages you to always be aware of what you're eating so you automatically make healthy choices and develop a healthy relationship with food." Mindfulness has its roots in Buddhism and is being recognised as one of the keys to maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Eating mindfully means paying attention to the food you are eating - the taste, textures and sensory attributes. Living at a fast pace means food often becomes a reward, a punishment or merely fuel.
Nutritionist Nicholas Arthur, from Appetite Right, says for many people, mindless eating becomes cyclical. "Being so busy can lead people to miss meals during the day, which makes them too hungry later on, so they overeat," he says. "Or a hectic day can lead people to be unconscious of what and how much they're eating."
For many of us, eating mindfully will require creating new habits. "Mindful eating does eventually become a habit and will change your relationship with food and your body forever," Hepburn says. There are no "good" or "bad" foods, just some that offer more health benefits than others. In her book, Hepburn says food should be a pleasurable form of sustenance that we eat because we're hungry, not because we need comfort, love or calming.
The positive effects of mindful eating can spill over into other areas of your life. Research published in the Journal Of The American Dietetic Association found regular yoga practise can help prevent weight gain in middle age. The researchers found yoga practitioners were more likely to be aware of what they were eating and to stop when they were full. Connecting with your body and your natural levels of hunger and satiety will take some time. But you can change your habits, Arthur says. Paying respect and attention to how you nourish yourself is what your body deserves.
If you've answered yes to any of these questions, you're not eating mindfully. But you can train yourself by following the steps below.