31 Jan How Mindful Eating Can Help with Weight Loss

YOU CAN eat well & enjoy the pleasure of eating around the table while meeting your nutrition goals.

Essentially, mindful eating is paying attention to What you are eating on Purpose. Slowing down, and making eating more intentional and less automatic. This helps to identify emotional hunger vs true physical hunger.

Digestion is really an amazing intricate process that involves all our senses. As the stomach fills with food or water, stretch receptors in the stomach are activated. The vagus nerve connects these signals from the gut to the brain and produces the feeling of pleasure and fullness after eating. Signals running up the vagus nerve from the gut to the brain, affect your perception of hunger and fullness, as well as mood and stress levels. Signals running down the vagus nerve from the brain to the gut affect digestion, secretion of digestive enzymes and GI motility. This process can take up to 20 minutes – eating too quickly may not give this hormone cross – talk system enough time to work. Which can lead to over eating.

Eating MindFULLY Allows you to savor & enjoy your food rather than inhaling MindLESSLY, which is often where we end up eating way more than we realize.

6 Tips to Be More Mindful with Meals

1. Use smaller plates & bowls

Especially with more calorie dense foods & if you are programed to finish everything on your plate. You are likely to feel more satisfied with less food. Adding high volume foods like veggies increase the presence of more food on your plate with less calories but high in fiber, vitamins and minerals. When your body gets all of the essential nutrients it needs from macronutrients (protein, fats, and carbs) and micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) you are more content and will have less cravings. That is why nutritional quality is so important.

2. Use your hand as a reference to guide food portions

When building your meal start with 2 cupped hands of veggies.

A closed fist size of grains.

Palm size portion of fish, meat or beans.

**This is a General recommendation. Everyone has different needs based on their age, height, weight, activity level, diet history, health status, and many other variables. And why it’s super important to understand your individual needs and what works best for YOU. This is what I help guide my nutrition clients identify for themselves.

3. Use Tall Glasses

Have you noticed beverage companies are packaging canned drinks like spiked seltzer, diet soda & light beers in taller thin cans? There’s a reason for this! This is all about our brains perception. Our brains will estimate there is more in a tall, narrow glass vs a short wide glass. This is helpful with higher calorie beverages like alcohol. Using a pretty glass in general makes drinking water more enjoyable. Or just using a wine glass for a mock tail with tart cherry juice, fresh lime juice, tonic and a spindrift seltzer (my favorite combo lately). Can be a great substitute for the nightly glass of wine.

4. Put Away Leftovers before Eating

Serve and plate food in the kitchen and put away leftovers in food storage containers in the fridge.

*If there’s a cookie sitting on the table, you’re more likely to eat it.* Putting food away and in the fridge eliminates this barrier if you know you had enough to eat at your meal. Journaling your food can also be helpful as a way to learn what you need with protein, carbs and fat to understand the best portions for you. Sometimes it’s a matter of making sure your meals are adequate with each food group which makes it easier to stop eating when you are content.

5. Turn off Screens

 Research suggests you are more satisfied when you pay attention to what you are eating. If you’re distracted or watching TV, your brain may not realize you have even eaten, leaving you feeling hungry. “where did that bag of chips go?”
If this is something you often do, it may be a habit. When you were younger did you always have the tv on when you were eating? Often times we are doing certain behaviors automatically. Shifting this to non distracted meals can really support being able to actually check in with your body and identify fullness cues before it becomes overwhelming stuffed cues 🙂

6. Slow Down

Savor the taste of your food. Rather than chewing JUST enough to swallow, try to chew your food 5-10x before swallowing. This will also help with digestion. Using smaller utensils may help you take smaller bites. Sit your water, slow down, enjoy your conversation. Breathe! Make your eating environment at relaxing as possible. Set the table, play relaxing music, light a candle / dim the lighting. We are able to better digest and absorb out food when our body is in a calm state.

Creating adequate balanced meals with foods that you enjoy is also a huge contributor to satisfaction. What you eat, how you eat, when you eat can all play a role in setting yourself up for the best nutrition and see the results you desire.