How conscious is your relationship with food- mindful or mindless

We live in a time where many have lost touch with the wellbeing of their being. To date the global wellness industry has hit an approximate net worth of $4 trillion US, that isn’t a small amount of change going into people’s health.

And yet, I’m sure there are, at the very least a few, people you know that experience one or more of these issues; overeating, emotional eating, undereating, binge eating, constantly dieting, body images concerns, weight concerns and health challenges that have emotional and psychological contributions, such as hormonal, digestion, neurological (including mood and brain functionality), immunity, and fatigue, to name a few.

Something doesn’t add up, right? And here I’m not talking about the calories. What this is really saying is that as a collective of people we have developed a very disordered relationship with food and nourishing our being. This means no longer can our focus with nutrition just be on the food itself but also based on the relationship we have with food and our bodies, which encompasses social and psychological elements of consideration.

Or though to some people the term ‘mindful eating’ might sound fluffy, I assure you the road to becoming more conscious and self-aware of your eating habits and if they are positive for your health and wellbeing or not is certainly not a fluffy journey.

This is a very large topic however I want to help you to start to consider some questions you might like to start asking yourself in relation to, how aware you are of your eating habits? And, how are these habits having effects on you and your life?

When you desire to grab food, you need to have a ‘pausing process’ to allow you some time to self-reflect to make better choices. Here are some of the questions below you need to ask yourself and analyse before making your final decision whether to eat the food you are looking at eating:

1.       Teach yourself to pause and reflect (see number 1. Below)

2.       Ask yourself whether you are physically hungry or not. Physical hunger is where someone has gone without food for extended periods of time and is experiencing hunger pains or reflux and can feel the stomach is genuinely empty. If you are not physically hungry then it is a psychological hunger, and you need to keep questioning yourself.

3.       Assess your immediate environment. Is it a stressful environment, so you desire to eat out of nervousness? Is it an environment where snacks are associated i.e., as soon as you sit down to your desk you want to eat a snack?

4.       How are you feeling: are you bored, tired, stressed, emotional, or demotivated? Assess why you want the foods you do. Will eating whatever food you were about to eat make you feel better physically and about yourself (mentally and emotionally), in this moment, or could you be choosing a better option?

Keep track in a journal of your self-exploration and journey as an overall picture so you can start to see in what way can you improve the mindfulness of your relationship with your food.

Your discovery tools over the next week are:

1.       Come up with a pause word or action, to assist yourself to pause, reflect and analyse. It needs to come from you and be rememberable for you (you may not get it right the first time but keep trying). So, I might like to click my fingers to help me to remember or use the word fudge or phrase “woah Danni”. This will take some conscious training on your part to help yourself to pause when you use this cue.

2.       Put the pause process into practice

3.       Learn to understand your physical hunger cues and when you are not physically hungry

4.       Assess your environment, make any changes you need to, to make sure you stay on track i.e., if food at your desk creates an unhealthy relationship with overeating and snacking on treat foods every time you sit down to work (even if you have just had a meal) then you need to remove all snacks from your environment and stop eating at your desk. Or if every time something challenging pops up for you and really need something sweet like chocolate then it could be time for you to start looking at how you can create some stress management strategies that do not involve food.

Download the picture with this article and print it off. Fill in your chosen ‘pausing process’, and stick it up in the environment where you most need the reminder to self-analyse your awareness of eating, before you eat.