KEY

7

Be Mindful About Eating

Does any of this sound familiar to you?

Ring any bells? These are all bad habits I got into in the past through mindlessness. My conscious mind told me that I ate responsibly, and if I looked at my three main meals, I did. But there was a lot of extra eating going on every day that I was not even aware of—finishing off my children’s leftovers, sampling food while I cooked, or plundering my husband’s desserts.

And those little candy bars! They were so small I figured I could ignore them. Each had only 100 calories, which does not seem like a lot, but I was eating one every single day. Take any unnecessary food you eat every day, divide its calories by 10, and that is how many pounds of difference it can make in a year. Those once-a-day bite-size candy bars were not worth 10 pounds in a year to me, so I stopped eating them.

Also, reading labels on food packaging has really helped me make better choices. I want to know what I am eating when I eat it!! Sometimes when I see how many calories or how much sugar or sodium is in something I’m about to eat, I decide I don’t want it after all.

Think About What You Eat and Drink

We must be mindful about our eating if we are going to take charge of our health. This simply means we think about what we eat and drink, and we make quality decisions about what we put into our bodies. I got rid of my bad food habits by making the commitment that every piece of food I put in my mouth would be a conscious decision.

Never before in human history has so much food been available so cheaply and so often. We stop for gas, and there is food. We go to work, and there is food. There is food in our living rooms, our desk drawers, on airplanes, and in conference rooms.

Part of the problem is that when we see food all around us and see other people eating it, it suddenly seems normal to be munching on something just like everyone else. In addition, the food service industry makes its living off our eating, so they keep suggesting we eat more and more. For example, the employee at the fast-food counter asks us if we would like to try an apple pie with our hamburger (and gets in trouble if he forgets). We are not being rude to refuse something we don’t need. We do not need to do anything out of obligation—especially when it comes to eating.

We must keep up our guard against the constant whisper to eat, eat, eat. As I explained in Key 1, few of us can do this by willpower alone, so we need to call on God to help us be mindful at all times. Mindful eating can be as important to good health and a good life as eating the right foods.

What is mindful eating? It’s simply being present—really present—whenever we choose to put food or drink in our mouths. It means asking ourselves, “Am I hungry? Do I really want this?” One of the most revealing questions to ask is, “Does this even taste good?” It can be amazing how often we say “no” to some food we are about to put in our mouths. In fact, the Bible recommends in Romans 13:14 that we make no provision for the flesh and put a stop to thinking about its cravings. Forming the habit of stopping eating the moment you start to feel full is majorly helpful also. You will feel more full in 20 minutes. But if you eat until you feel really full, you will more than likely feel overstuffed by the time all your food gets into your stomach.

Saying “no” to food is something many people have to learn to do because we were taught as children not to waste food. My husband grew up in a family that barely had enough to get by; nobody wasted food. As an adult he felt obligated not only to clean his plate, but to clean our children’s plates too. As he got a bit older, he noticed some weight gain and realized he had to stop eating food just because it was there. Instead of eating too much so we do not waste food, we should aim to prepare only what we know we are going to eat. If it is hard for you to leave food on your plate, then use a smaller plate.

Like anything else, mindful eating is a skill that takes practice to perfect. The more you do it, the better you will get, but there will be some bumps along the way. If you keep working at mindful eating, you will get better at it and will find yourself backsliding less and less. But you may still slip now and then, so don’t beat yourself up when you do.

Five Ways to Be a Mindful Eater

1. Pay Attention to the Way You Feel After You Eat
I used to think a big plate of pasta was one of my favorite lunches, and I certainly enjoyed it while I was eating it. But about 20 minutes later, an overwhelming sleepiness would come over me. I had no energy for work and felt downright grumpy. When that happened, I did not recover until much later in the afternoon. It took me years to connect this with the pasta. Now I know that eating pasta or other starches with little or no protein wrecks me for hours.

How many of your “feeling bad sessions” are connected to bad food you ate earlier that day or the previous evening? Maybe quite a few! Our days are too precious to waste feeling bad, so if you are caught in this trap, please take action. Food is not just about the immediate gratification that comes when some delicious morsel hits your tongue; it’s supposed to give you fuel, energy, and a sense of well-being throughout each day. Remember that the good taste on your tongue only lasts a minute or less, and the extra pounds, or lack of energy, can last a long time.

One reason junk food exists is that so many people do not recognize the connection between what they eat and how they feel. Once you become mindful and aware of this, you will be amazed at how you want to change your eating habits. You will actually feel drawn to salads and other healthy foods because you will come to associate them with the good feelings they give you. Even favorites such as chips and cookies may begin to lose some of their appeal and not even taste good anymore as you quickly become aware of your body’s negative reaction to them. Our bodies basically crave whatever we give them regularly. You can train your body to like vegetables and not care that much about sugar.

2. Say Grace
Thanking God for the bounty on your table is the best way I know to immediately bring yourself into a healthier relationship with your food. If you have a tendency to overeat, ask God to help you at every single meal to stay in His perfect will. God wants you to enjoy what you eat, and true enjoyment does not mean eating so much that you spend the next few hours feeling sick and guilty.

3. Don’t Multitask with Food
When you eat, eat. When you work, work. When you watch TV, don’t use that time as a snack break. You will enjoy your life much more if you do one thing at a time and give it your full attention. When something like TV or work distracts you, you get cut off from your natural sensations and are likely to keep stuffing food in your mouth without even knowing it. Many people are so used to having food around that they come to think of it like background noise; it’s just there and they eat it without paying much attention to what they are doing. If they are working at their desks without snacking on a bag of jellybeans, something just feels wrong.

Breaking the mindless eating habit is essential. Hundreds or even thousands of calories a day can go into your body and you have little pleasure to show for them. A person can eat four pieces of white bread with butter just because the server set it on the table, not realizing they have eaten 800 to 1,000 calories! Make sure when you are eating that you really are consciously choosing to do so and that you are aware of what you are doing. Most people who eat bread and butter prior to a meal would not even consider or remember it if asked what they ate. They were hungry; the server put it in front of them; and they mindlessly ate it while waiting for the real meal.

4. Slow Down
It takes about 20 minutes for the food you eat to pass through your stomach and reach your small intestine, which detects the food and sends “all full” messages to the brain. But if you are eating quickly, by the time your brain gets those messages from the small intestine, it is too late; a lot more food is already in the pipeline and you are painfully stuffed. Slow down and you give your body more time to fill up. Some tips:

image Chew your food well.

image Swallow one bite before reaching for another.

image Eat several small courses instead of one huge plateful. You will probably feel like you ate more, but in reality you didn’t.

image Have relaxed conversation with friends or family while you eat, but never discuss anything intense or upsetting.

image Have your salad first. By the time you get to the calorie-dense main course, you will not be ravenous.

image Don’t let yourself get too hungry. When we are really, really hungry, it’s hard not to eat too quickly.

5. Turn off the “Bargain” Detector
Americans have become incredibly savvy at getting good deals, whether it’s a huge tub of nuts for five dollars at a bulk discount warehouse or a weekend in Cancun for $199. But when we start thinking like bargain shoppers about our food, we can get into trouble. All-you-can-eat buffets and salad bars do us no favors. They plant the notion in our heads that the more we eat for a low price, the better the deal. But once we eat beyond what we need, the only deal we get is a cut rate on diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Buying large “family packs” can get people into trouble too. If you eat a normal portion and freeze the rest of the package (or have a big family to feed), great. But if you end up eating more than you normally would or eating leftovers out of the fridge “before they go bad,” then the good deal is not worth it. As the old saying goes, “You are what you eat,” and if you don’t want “bigger is better” to apply to your eating habits, then resist that mentality when you buy groceries.

Act on It

Which of the five actions in this key will you take so you can practice mindful eating? Write them down, commit to them, and start today.