How To Eat Mindfully During The Holiday Season
What is mindful eating?
Mindful eating is based on mindfulness, a Buddhist concept. Mindfulness is a form of meditation that helps you recognize and cope with your emotions and physical sensations. Mindful eating is about using mindfulness to reach a state of full attention to your experiences, cravings, and physical cues when eating.
A more in-depth definition would be that mindful eating is maintaining an in-the-moment awareness of the food and drink you put into your body. It involves observing how the food makes you feel and the signals your body sends about taste, satisfaction, and fullness. Mindful eating requires you to simply acknowledge and accept rather than judge the feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations you observe. It can extend to the process of buying, preparing, and serving your food as well as consuming it.
Mindful eating isn’t about being perfect, always eating the right things, or never allowing yourself to eat on the go again. And it’s not about establishing strict rules for how many calories you can eat or which foods you have to include or avoid in your diet. Rather, it’s about focusing all your senses and being present as you shop for, cook, serve, and eat your food.
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WHY YOU SHOULD TRY IT
In today’s world, distractions have shifted our attention away from the actual act of eating and more toward televisions, computers, and smartphones. Eating has become a mindless act for many, and is often done quickly. Some may find themselves eating in the car commuting to work, at the desk in front of a computer screen, or on the couch watching TV. When you eat mindlessly, you’re usually shoveling food down regardless of whether you’re still hungry or not. And sometimes mindless eating can be an emotional response rather than a physical response to your hunger.
How to practice mindful eating
In order to practice mindfulness, you need to participate in an activity with total awareness. So when it comes to mindful eating, you’ll want to eat with all your attention rather than on autopilot or while you’re doing something else. Here are a few simple steps to get started with mindful eating, with each step having powerful benefits of their own:
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Eat slowly and don’t rush your meals
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Chew thoroughly
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Eliminate distractions by turning off the TV and putting down your phone
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Eat in silence
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Focus on how the food makes you feel
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Stop eating when you’re full
Try practicing mindful eating for short, five-minute periods at first and gradually build up from there. You can also begin mindful eating when you’re making your shopping list or browsing the menu at a restaurant, it doesn’t have to start when you’re already eating.
Mindless eating vs. Mindful eating
When it comes to eating it’s important to know how to distinguish mindless eating and mindful eating. And if you regularly eat mindlessly, finding the difference between the two might be a little more difficult. But there are clues you can look for to help tell the two apart.
The signs of mindless eating can be any or all of the following:
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Eating on autopilot or while multitasking
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Eating to fill a void like stress or depression
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Eating junk or comfort food
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Eating food as quickly as possible
The signs of mindful eating can be any or all of the following:
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Focusing all of your attention on food and the experience of eating
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Eating only to satisfy physical hunger
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Eating nutritionally healthy meals and snacks
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Eating slowly and savoring every bite
Mindful eating can also help you distinguish between emotional and physical hunger, which can increase your awareness of food-related triggers and gives you the freedom to choose your response to them.
How to eat mindfully during the holiday season
The holidays can feel overwhelming especially if you’re working on your relationship to food and make holiday food choices that fit your needs. Whether it’s pressure from loved ones, not having food around that you can control, or simply the frequency of social events. The following are tools to help maintain your mindful eating habits during the holiday seasons.
Communicate your needs
Communication is particularly important, especially when you find that you’re often in eating situations where there aren’t any food options that look good to you. This doesn’t equate to restricting intake or creating food rules around holiday eating.
Instead, it’s about knowing what you enjoy and what you don’t particularly enjoy. Your best bet in this case, and quite frankly in all cases, is to be open and honest with the host or hostess. Communicate your needs with positivity and excitement by explaining that you’re excited to come and celebrate the holiday, and would love it if you could bring a dish that you love and know others would enjoy too. You could even explain to the host that bringing something of your own would make the event even more enjoyable for you! Communication is key during the holiday season, especially when it comes to eating.
Set healthy boundaries
We’ve all experienced peer pressure with food before. The, “You have to have some of this, I spent all day making it! It’s so good trust me!” Or the, “I know you’re going to love it, just give it a small taste. Come on just one bite! It’s different from the ones you’ve had before!”
More often than not, peer pressure is done accidentally and without poor intent. So one of the best ways to respond to it is with positive boundaries. Simply let the person know that despite the fact that you’re sure it’s delicious and you’d like to give it a try sometime, you’re already enjoying the dish that you have, or you’re possibly already full. Whatever the case may be, try setting boundaries is how we communicate our personal wants and needs with others.
Build a balanced plate
When you are intentional about what you want to fill up your plate with, you’ll be building more balanced meals throughout the holidays. The keyword is intentional because not every meal during the holiday season needs to contain all elements of nutrition, but the intention to try your best is key and good enough.
When heading to the holiday buffet, dinner, or potluck table, try these combinations to build your balanced plate:
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A protein with a starchy and non-starchy carbohydrate, and a fat with a flavor factor; OR
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A protein with a sugary and non-starchy carbohydrate, and a fat with a flavor factor.
The key here is to decide whether you want a starchy (potatoes or rice) or sugary (soda, cake, or canned fruit) carbohydrate. This will give you a place to start and ensure you’re eating in a balanced way that feels good to you.
Eat with intention
Part of making holiday food choices that align with us should include enjoyment! Eating for nourishment and eating nutrient-dense foods are just as important as eating those foods you love just for the flavor, nostalgia, and tradition.
What’s even more important, is when you’re eating foods just for enjoyment, is to eat them intentionally and with mindfulness to get the entire experience. When you don’t eat with intention or with mindfulness, you’re more likely to overeat, eat when you’re not even hungry, or eat foods that you don’t even really want or desire simply because they’re around you.
When you’re in these social eating scenarios, try your best to take a pause and check-in with the intention of that meal. Try to listen to your hunger and fullness cues, choose food items you truly enjoy and look forward to, and say no to the ones that really just don’t do it for you. Being mindful allows you to enjoy yourself and prioritize both nourishment and enjoyment with your eating.
Challenges that might be present when trying to eat mindfully
Here are some common challenges that might present themselves during the holiday season that could make mindful eating more difficult that usual:
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Difficulty navigating so many social gatherings
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Being served food you’re not used to having
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Having no control over the food that’s available at the gatherings
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Peer pressure from friends or family members to eat a certain way
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Feeling guilty about enjoying yourself too much during the holidays
If any of these challenges resonate with you during the holidays, or anytime of the year, use the mindfulness tools from above to find balance and navigate your food choices.
Benefits of mindful eating
Being mindful of the food you eat can promote better digestion, keep you full with less food, and influence wiser choices about what you eat in the future. It can also help you free yourself from unhealthy habits around food and eating. In addition, mindful eating can also help with some of the following:
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It can let you know when you’re turning to food for reasons other than hunger
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It can give you a greater pleasure from the foods you’re eating
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It can help you make healthier choices about the foods you eat and put into your body
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It can make you feel fuller sooner, and you will eat less
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It can let you eat in a healthier, more balanced way.
Mindful eating can help you to avoid overeating, make it easier to change your dietary habits for the better, and enjoy the improved well-being that comes with a healthier diet. It can also help with eating disorders as well.
Mindful eating & Eating disorders
Mindful eating can help prevent eating disorders like binge eating and emotional eating. Binge eating involves eating a large amount of food in a short amount of time, mindlessly and without control and emotional eating involves letting your feelings dictate when you’re hungry and what you want to eat, even if you are not physically hungry. Mindful eating may drastically reduce the severity and frequency of both binge eating and emotional eating episodes.
Filling and saturating yourself with food can help mask what you’re really hungry for, but only for a short time. And then the real hunger or need will return. Mindful eating gives you the skills you need to deal with these impulses. It puts you in charge of your responses instead of at the whim of your instinct.
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Mindful eating is a powerful tool to regain control of your eating, and the holidays are just one example of many eating scenarios that you may encounter throughout the year. So take the upcoming holiday season to use as a test run for new mindful eating techniques, and remember that it takes time and patience.
Extra tips for mindful eating
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Ask yourself why you’re eating, whether you’re truly hungry, and whether the food you chose is healthy.
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Try taking a few deep breaths before eating a meal or snack to quietly contemplate what you’re about to put into your body.
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Ask yourself how well the food you’re eating makes you feel after you’ve eaten it. How much better do you feel after eating? How much more energy and enthusiasm do you have after a meal or snack? Asking these questions can be extremely helpful.
