Mindful Eating – being mindful during Christmas season
Think of the following situation: After a long day working in the home office, your partner has a dinner prepared for the two of you. You are excited for dinner. The food is on your plate already, wonderful! You reach for the silverware and start eating. You talk about the past day and work-related things and discuss the upcoming to-do’s for Christmas. And without realizing, your plate is empty. Half an hour later you feel tired and end up on the couch due to eating way too much.
Probably many people know situations like this. Every day we deal with the subject food itself, and yet in most cases we eat unconsciously and inattentively. We eat a whole plate without really noticing what and how much we eat.
In this content special we’ ll show you how to switch off the “autopilot” while eating and guide you back to the roots – how to learn to listen to your gut feeling. Especially in the hectic pre-Christmas time, you will notice how good it feels and how intense you will perceive the taste of all the Christmas treats.
The art of eating consciously
Mindfulness is a central principle from the Buddhist meditation practice, which has been practiced for 2500 years.
“Mindfulness means paying attention: conscious, in the present moment and without judging … Mindfulness is the art of living consciously … Mindfulness means turning off the autopilot in everyday life.”
Therefore, mindful eating is not a new diet, but a special kind of awareness and conscious eating. It is not about counting calories or excluding certain foods, but rather about the HOW of eating. It means to focus only on eating and drinking, to be conscious about every bite and every sip without judging.
- When, where and how do I eat?
- What is good for me when eating?
- How do I feel and what symptoms arise when I am hungry/fed?
- What does my food look like, what is its texture, how does it taste?
- What is the matter that I eat?
- What thoughts and emotions do I associate with eating?
- What are my thoughts and feelings while eating?
When the eyes are bigger than the belly
- We eat after a stressful day to reward ourselves and not because we are hungry.
- During the lunch break, we go out for lunch with colleagues due to the group spirit, although the food doesn’t taste very good.
- At a TV evening together with friends we reach for sweets and chips as usual, although we are still fed from our dinner.
Obviously, eating is more than just taking nutrients in or filling our stomach. In the following you will find an overview of all types of hunger and tips what really helps against it:
You haven’t eaten for hours and your stomach is growling? This is the hunger for food, the real hunger, which is satisfied by eating the amount of food you need. But how can you find out how much that is? Before you eat, rate your hunger on a scale of 0 to 10. This rating helps you, even while eating, to eat until your stomach is pleasantly full.
“This dessert looks so good – it still fits in”. The appetite caused by your eyes is addressed by the visual appearance of food, which is also used in TV commercials, among other things. Hunger caused by your eyes and the appearance of food– things like a lovingly laid table and beautifully decorated food will help to.
Already thinking of the smell of freshly baked cake or pizza in the oven is probably enough to make your mouth water. This kind of hunger is caused by the sense of smell, which is also involved in the taste experience. So if you eat attentively and smell your food, you can increase your enjoyment and satisfy your hunger and your nose.
Stress, lovesickness, boredom: Often, only a piece of chocolate can help. But no matter how good the food tastes, it cannot satisfy the need for closeness, love and happiness. But then the question remains: when will we have enough and feel full if the reason is to saturate our emotions with food? The best thing you can do is to listen to your inner self and thoughts the next time you have an “emotional meal”. This way shows you to find out what would be really good for you. Instead of eating some random food, it might help you to call a good friend for example.
How it works – 5 tips for more mindfulness while eating
You do not have to meditate right away to create more mindfulness in your life. Here you will find tips and exercises on how to integrate small mindful moments during your meals.
1. Eat without distractions
Mobile phone off, laptop closed, TV off! Sit down in a quiet place to enjoy your meal without distraction. Try to feel and enjoy the moment and focus completely on your meal. It is helpful to consciously breathe in and out deep into your stomach a short time before eating. This allows us to take in more oxygen, which increases our attention and concentration. Experience more.
2. Take your time
Enjoyment takes time. If you gobble down your meals, you will feel and taste very little of it. Chew slowly and enjoy your meals. To make it easier to start, include small challenges, such as being the slowest at lunch, not taking up the fork again until you have swallowed, using chopsticks instead of silverware or eating with the “wrong” hand.
3. Eat with all senses
Pay attention to the smell, appearance, consistency, temperature, aroma and taste of the food – with every single bite. With the biscuit exercise you can practise right away how to involve all your senses while eating. Try it out – all you need is a Christmas biscuit of your choice.
4. Listen to your body
It is not easy to distinguish between “autopilot” and the feeling of hunger. Therefore, before grabbing something to eat, ask yourself whether you are really hungry or is it another reason? The need for food can be caused by your eyes, nose or heart/emotions. It also helps to interpret the hunger and signal of satiety correctly during the meal if you put away your silverware after every second bite. Another way could be to serve smaller portions in the first step and take a break after half of the meal.
5. Show appreciation for food
Mindful eating also means appreciating food. Consider the long process our food went through: from cultivation, through processing, to the moment the food ends up on our plate. In this way, mindfulness can contribute to food appreciation and promote a sustainable lifestyle.
Mindful eating requires training. It may take a while before you get the hang of it, because your body will need time to adjust, too. In the beginning it is sufficient to choose a few meals a week and try to enjoy them carefully. Maybe you would like to start directly with this afternoon’s coffee.
The Challenge helps you to integrate a little exercise of mindfulness into your everyday life.
The effects of Mindful Eating
1. Improved body perception
Unlike children, we are not used to the natural “intelligence of our body”, the natural feeling of hunger. We no longer perceive signals of our body and eat out of habit. Furthermore, often we follow an external rhythm: e.g. lunch break at 1 p.m., lunch portions in a given size, at 4 p.m. colleagues get cake from the bakery. We often follow these eating habits without reflection and no longer listen to the signals our body sends us. By eating carefully, we can relearn our self-perception and body confidence and have the chance to give our body what it really needs.
2. More pleasure and enjoyment
Involving all our senses when eating increases our ability to enjoy. Since we perceive colour, taste, smell and consistency intensively when we eat mindfully, even a supposedly boring meal can become an everyday experience.
3. Stop inappropriate eating habits
Especially in stressful situations, the brain switches to autopilot mode and falls back into well-tried patterns. For example, we then quickly reach for high-fat and sweet foods because we want to compensate or reward ourselves for the effort. With mindful eating we can break these habits.
4. Stress reduction
We can stop the stressful everyday life for a moment and calm our senses by activating the parasympathetic nervous system.
5. Faster feeling of satiety
Our sense of hunger is created in the brain. When we eat, the brain asks for various information, such as salivation, stomach filling level and blood sugar level. The brain needs about 20 minutes to pick up all these signals. If we eat our meal quickly and hastily, our stomach is full, but the necessary information has not yet reached the brain. Then we continue to eat even though we are no longer hungry and feel over-satiated afterwards. So if you chew slowly, you give your body a chance to indicate when it has had enough.
6. Improved digestion
By eating slowly and chewing properly, we support our digestive system and prevent digestive problems such as flatulence or a bloated feeling. In addition, the parasympathetic nervous system is activated, which additionally promotes digestion.
Mindful food choices – healthy Christmas biscuits
Christmas is just around the corner and with it the peak season of biscuits, stollen and co. With the “biscuit exercise” you have already learned how to eat a biscuit in a mindful way. Just as important as mindfulness during the meal, however, is mindfulness when choosing food. How about healthy biscuits for a change?
At first, this sounds like one thing above all: very little taste. But quite the opposite. There are plenty of healthy biscuits that not only taste delicious but also contain high-quality ingredients.
All you have to do is to follow a few tips:
Healthy sweeteners instead of sugar
A certain sweetness is undoubtedly part of all biscuits. But it does not always have to be refined sugar. It only supplies the body with useless calories. In addition, you won’t find any healthy nutrients in sugar at all. Maple syrup or honey are better alternatives. Or you can make use of the sweetness of ripe bananas or pureed apples in order to cut down on sugar.
Using dried fruit as a sweetener
Dried fruit is also an ideal substitute for refined sugar. Whether figs, plums, dates, apricots or sultanas – there is a great variety and meets all types of tastes. In relation to their weight, they contain much more natural sweetness than fresh fruit and in addition to that some valuable vitamins and minerals. Chopped dried fruit can be used to give doughs a fruity sweetness and baked biscuits a beautiful decoration. But keep your eyes open when buying: try to find brands with no additional sugar, dried fruits are often sulphurised or contains added sugar.
Healthy fats from nuts
Nuts and almonds are important ingredients for healthy biscuits. Besides healthy unsaturated fatty acids, they contain important B vitamins, vitamin E and folic acid. In other words, they are perfect vitamin bombs to prepare for the pre-Christmas stress.
Wholemeal flour instead of white flour
Unlike white flour, wholemeal flour is made from the whole grain. It is considered to be healthy because the outer layers of the grain contain a lot of fibre, minerals and vitamins. The high fibre content is, among other things, good for digestion and strengthens the immune system, which is an advantage during the cold winter period. A further plus is that fibre ensures that the blood sugar level remains constant, so that the desire for sweets does not return too quickly. However, you should note that wholemeal flour absorbs more moisture when baked. You should therefore add 10 – 20 percent more liquid to the dough if you replace white flour with wholemeal flour in a conventional recipe.
But enough of theory for now. With this Recipe you can try out the tips right away. And best of all: the little treats are quick and very easy to prepare. So let’s start!
Our expert for this topic
– Isabel Hoffmann –
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