Mindful Eating compared to Dieting for Weight Loss.

Mindful Eating compared to Dieting for Weight Loss.How does mindful eating differ from mindless eating?

In this episode we talk about mindful eating and tips to incorporate it into your daily routine for success and healthy eating. Listening to your body and giving your body nourishment.

Let’s talk about some tips to implement mindful eating into your day and how mindful eating differs from mindless eating, no need for diet culture.

Want to work with me? Click link below

Click here ➡️ https://clarissabooker.com/programs

Journals: https://clarissabooker.com/journals

Contact

Facebook Group: https://bit.ly/wellbeinggroup

Email: info@clarissabooker.com

Website: https://clarissabooker.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clarissadbooker/

(00:00):

Hi, everyone. How are you doing today? Hope you had a wonderful week today. We're going to talk a little bit about mindful eating, just being present in the moment, your mind and body just being there, just taking your time and everything when you're enjoying it, your food cause being mindfulness. Okay. It's about being present in the moment, right? And it's just like, it's not just about meditation. It's just like a whole lifestyle, right? That's all. We also we'll incorporate that into different things in our life. And that includes eating. We just want to pay attention in a nonjudgmental way and have compassion towards ourself when we're here eating. Cause sometimes we beat ourselves up. We do sometimes. Right? So we want to try to listen to our body and stop when we're full. I mean, sometimes you go out or you're just eating and it tastes so good.

(00:52):

You just, just like eat. You just want to eat it. All right. So we just want to try to take slower bites and just be in the moment. So don't try not to eat past the feeling of being full. So you know the itis. Yeah. Yeah. We feel sometimes we just ate. We just eat so much. We want to try to avoid that. That's actually not mindful eating. Okay. So just listening and paying attention to your body and the signals, it gives you. If you find yourself, unbuttoning your pants, we've all done it. Right? Let me just get that one extra little bite in. Then you should probably put your fork down or something. Parents we're talking and we're just in a good conversation. And we're just in a social environment. You just eating and it's okay. Right. You're just not paying attention. Cause you're just having fun and you're enjoying yourself.

(01:43):

But you want to try to put your fork down in between your bites and just still try your best to pay attention to what you're eating. Sometimes you feel like, Oh, I don't want to insult the host by not eating and things of that nature. Like say you're at a dinner party, which you don't have to force yourself to eat all the food. Okay. Like even sometimes in a household you ever grow up. When you're told to finish your plate, you're like eat all the food I made there for you. You know, sometimes grandma's left. Um, what'd you think you doing go back there and finish all that food and you're full. They're like, don't leave the table. I mean, it happens in households sometimes, right? Not everybody's household, but you might have a relative where you go over and it's like, um, what, what are you going to do?

(02:30):

Yeah. But you want to try to not do that as much as you can because that contributes to consuming more calories than you need. Right. Then you're feeling sluggish and that results in you also being tired because you have too much food and your body only needs so much, so many calories and nutrients. I mean, once your body gets all that it needs. It's good. So, and also emotionally eating. He wants to definitely avoid that. If you like, you had a bad day, so you just go home and you just want to reach for something out of the pantry. Like you want those cookies, you know, that cake or whatever it is, everybody has something of choice. Right. And that does lead into a vicious cycle sometimes. Then you'll find yourself getting mad at yourself. So you'll be guilt. You'll feel guilty right. About eating that.

(03:20):

So then you're like, Oh man. So then you might eat more and then you feel, then you might feel like sad or just another emotion comes over. Then you end up eating more and it turns into a vicious cycle. So you want to try to be careful of that. Okay. So you just want to eat when your body tells you to eat. Like if your stomach is growling or your energy's low, but you want to try to eat before it gets to that point where you're like ravishing, you just like grab something and just like eat it. Cause you're not. Cause then you might not even eat slow. Okay. So you want to try to use like a scale from one to 10 and maybe you find yourself at like a three or per se. And so you reach and then you want to start planning to eat and you ready to eat.

(04:00):

So you don't want to be starving of course, but you don't want to be overly stuffed at the same time. Right. And Jay eating around other people is good. I mean, makes you, it helps you enjoy the food more and better. And at certain times, and places is good. I mean, sometimes we're like super busy and it's even, it's hard to do that. I mean, I get it. Cause we sometimes we running around and then that also leads to mindless eating when you're on the go, because you're not being present. And you just like eating the food. Like if you have something to do and you're like rushing and you're just like going and going. So you want to try your best to eat at a set time. Like that's when meal prepping comes into play. Like if you could just prepare your food and bring it with you and me, just try to avoid eating on the fly, sit down while you eat, you know, just take the time to enjoy it.

(04:52):

Just enjoy all those nutrients that's coming into your body and knowledge, your food and your response to the food, using all of your senses. Right? I mean, just think about how much better a food tastes when it just smells so good. It smells so good. I mean, we use all these senses and it goes in play with water or eating and yeah. You know, a lot of times also when you are emotionally eat, you turn to comfort food, right. It's just like you just grab that thing. That's really heavy and saturated that you don't need. So also if we are being more mindful when we're eating, then we will pick up more nutritional food. Right. So you'll, and then you'll, you'll feel better. You'll have more energy, just all the things. Right. And then also when you're doing this mindful eating, you don't even have to particularly worry about your weight as much because your body is going to regulate itself.

(05:46):

And then you're going to have the energy to do more and to get all the things accomplished that you're doing to be more productive, just all the things just when you're eating, you're just eating, take a bite, put your fork down and chew. Sometimes we eat too fast. I mean, I'm guilty of that sometimes. You know, sometimes I'm brushing, I try my best not to do that. Okay. Especially because I know better. So I'm like, okay, you need to calm down, sit down here and chew your food. What you doing? Okay. You know, so it's like, we just have to try to just enjoy the moment. Right. You know what they say, living in the moment. Yes. All of that. All the things with our life in general. And that also includes your nutrients because what do we have? We don't have our health. Okay.

(06:35):

We don't have anything because it's what keeps us going. It's we have this here for our family, for ourselves, for our loved ones, all the things. So it's just important. So if we can try to avoid it as much as possible, just eating and multitasking because you're not paying attention to what you're eating. You're just going with the flow. And you're just shoving food because if you're not paying attention, you're just not, you're not even really chewing. It. Just take a moment like next time when you're there, like even take a piece of fruit for example, or just, and see how and just take it good bite and just chew, counter chews, you know, and swallow the food. I mean, instead of just like eating the food really fast, I mean, half the time, we're not even chewing her food, we're just like biting into it.

(07:20):

And we're like swallowing it. When you think about it, notice that when you're eating next time and it makes experience so much more enjoyable, you know? I mean, some places you go and it, it, their culture is different. Right. Where they just sit down and they just enjoy their food. And it's just like a really nice relaxing experience. Cause they're not rushing. We rush a lot here, you know, which leads to the trickle effect of us also being stressed out because we're always going and going and going sometimes times, you know? So also considering where your food comes from now, you know, the sustainability of it and just appreciating your food, you know, and some other reasons, while we might have mine, less eating is like a learned behavior. Like for instance, like say when you was growing up, you wanted to eat sweets for example.

(08:19):

And maybe somebody was like, well, once you do that, then I'll give you a piece of cake or something like that as like a reward. And it got implanted in your head. I mean, it could be anything. And then as you got older, you just say, you got to win, you know, say something went well. And you're like, man, this is great. I'm going to celebrate and go eat cake. Right. And so you develop that behavior. And so you think it's okay, that's how you have to try to unlearn that. Right. Or we talked about the emotional eating cycle, which a lot of times people struggle with sometime. Okay. And there's learnings like from TV commercials where they just kind of implant it in your, in your head, like marketing, you ever see a commercial when they have, there's like somebody sitting there and they're sad or something and they're like, here have a cookie, you know, it's just the stuff they put out there and you just keep seeing it over and over again.

(09:20):

And it's like, it gets implanted in your head. Next thing you know, you're not feeling good and you in the store and you like, you know what, I think I'm going to get a cookie. I mean, she's, you gotta be aware of some of the things. I mean, sometimes we do things and we don't even notice it. It's not like it's bad or anything. It's just that it's, it's behaviors and habits that we've developed over time that we can go relearn. It's like brain training, like mindfulness is like brain training. Like I was mentioning before. And I believe it was episode five podcast. How was talking about how I had to learn how to meditate. Cause it was hard for me in the beginning. And it's the same thing with like mindful eating. Like I myself have to like pay attention cause I will be rushing and I have to sit down and be like, enjoy your food because you know, then it could mess with it messes with your body if you're like eating too fast, you know?

(10:12):

And then, you know, if you make sure eating the right food, you know, and a lot of times we have like this positive and negative meaning like how we like label food, like, you know, going back to the behavior with the cookie, how it's, you know, this, this is going to taste good. This is your a reward. And, and so we're painting the sweets in the positive light and then the greens and the vegetables in the negative light when it should be reversed. But it's like, this is the thing that's in our head like, like pers like, you know, you might want to eat the sugar, but then we have nature sugar, which is fruit. Like berries are good. They have a lot of antioxidants in it. And it helps your system on so many levels. Right? Much. You automatically think about the candy. It's like we have to reset our minds and our body.

(11:02):

And we just, we have, we just have to realign our mind, body and spirit so much. And then you'll just, you'll just, it's just amazing how it just flows. Right. And once you get there, because the Apple has actually been than the cupcake and you asked, you know, and you're eating it and then you feel more satisfied. You get nutrients in your body just taking that time. Right. And then we talked about when you're rushing and lots, and also we were in our head a lot we're in our head. So all that goes together, right. How we're rushing and doing the social thing. And we're thinking in our head, we're just not paying attention to any of the things. Right. And we're just, we're just assuming the food. So, but what about just like taking time to look at the census, right? Like when you're your next meal, after listening to this, try to lose like your senses, like what does it look like? Take in, you know, we talk about the appearance of the food, right? Does it look appealing? Does it catch your eye?

(12:07):

And when you talk about hearing, like if you're just sitting there in the moment, do you hear birds chirping? I mean, what's playing in the background. It can be relaxing and we definitely low smell, goes hand in hand with food, right? Just that just enhances everything. You walk into a room and it smells good. You're like, yes, I am ready to eat. Okay. It just is so good. I mean, you don't want to eat some, if it don't smell good, I would suggest you don't. I mean, you might, I don't, I shouldn't say that. You know, cause sometimes something has an interesting smell on it. I could taste good. So don't listen to me when I say that and how does it taste, tasting your food, enjoying it? How does it sit on your palette? You know, just taking that bite right. Then putting your fork down and just eating, tasting, just tasting all those flavors in your mouth.

(13:00):

Like how does it go down? Can you taste the layers of the food, whether you prepared it or whether you're out and if you preparing it that makes it even so much better. Right. If you're cooking at home and you put all this love into your dish and you just sit down and you like, yes, and you just, you take a bite and you just feel that layers and the complexity of whatever it is that you made and touch, how does it feel? You know, how does it feel? Is it, is it soft? Is it have more of a dense texture, little, little ridges, all the things, you know, and then just think about how you feel when you're eating the food. Are you getting the necessary nutrients? Cause you'll definitely feel it, you know, you will definitely feel it. And there's like mental hunger.

(13:49):

They say that's influenced by your surroundings. People you're around. Maybe your physician, your friends, all of the things. Right. So just pay attention to that. And the signals from your stomach, you know, especially, you know, when they talk about being hangry, we're going to use something like that. But instead we're going to call it manger, M a N G E R. So for the M it's be mindful check-in. So just checking in with your body, your emotions, your thoughts, and on a hunger scale, where do you feel like from a scale of one to 10, say, can take three breaths then just like kind of check in with yourself and see where you're at and just seeing what are you hungry for? And sometimes not even really hungry, you're just thirsty because a lot of times we do not consume enough water. So like a general rule of thumb is to rank your half of your body weight in water and Dan.

(14:49):

So if you're like a hundred pounds drink 50 ounces. Okay. And if you drank coffee, drink a nut, drink some more. And if you drinking alcohol drink some more. So a lot of times we do not drink enough water. So lot of times we feel tired or we think we're hungry and we just need to hydrate. Okay. Which is very important. But I mean, sometimes we're busy and then we reach for other things. You know, we, instead of drinking water, we might have multiple cups of coffee or something like that. Or just, just something. Or maybe if you maybe drink soda, whatever your thing is. Some people like juice, I mean, but drink more water. Okay. So sometimes that's it. Or sometimes you are hungry and how hungry are you? Okay. So just kind of checking in with yourself and seeing where you're at. Just give you a good basis before you start eating something. And then just knowing what is that you want. Okay. And a is for assess. So just observe and savor the food, just using our senses, our five senses. So sight smell, sound, taste, and touch. We taught by that a second ago. Just taking that all in. When we're eating, just enjoying the moment, just being present in the moment, having mindful eating, it's just being there. Right. And just not rushing and just enjoying your food, appreciating your food, all the nutrients that is bringing to you.

(16:13):

It's like love, right? All that food loves you. It's it's like

(16:17):

You want us to have a good relationship with food. I mean, that, that's the thing. Cause not everybody has a good relationship with food and that happens for many different reasons. Okay. But food is good. Just good, healthy food. Don't obsess about it. Okay. Because that's not good either. Just having a good, healthy relationship with your food. Food is good and N is for nourish. Right? So nourishing your body. Just getting just enough dot overeating. We don't want itis. Okay. Leave that for Thanksgiving. You get past. Okay. Cause we know it's about to go down Thanksgiving, but every day is not Thanksgiving. All right. So you wouldn't feel satisfied and not over full, just eat to satiety and you're good. Then you're not going to be sleepy and all the things it was happening to all of us. Okay. And I know I've been there.

(17:10):

We all have. So just, just paying attention to all of that stuff. Next we have G right. Gentle investigation, gently investigates. Pardon me? So why are eating, just pay attention to your hunger and satiety levels. You know, just giving yourself permission to feel full and stop eating. Okay. You don't have to finish your plate. You could leave food on the plate. You can eat it tomorrow, put it in the fridgerator or it away or whatever it is that you feel comfortable doing. But you are not required to finish all the food on your plate. Give yourself permission to stop eating if it needs to happen. Okay. Cause sometimes we get, you brought up in households where you're told to finish your plate and just give yourself permission to relearn that if that's something that you struggle with, okay.

(18:17):

Any is for eat, just eating slowly and chewing your food thoroughly while you're eating, just enjoying your food. Okay. Just becoming aware. So it all goes together. Okay. And ours for recognize, just taking your outer and your inner thoughts and surroundings and putting it all together. So things you hear from the outside diet, things that you hear in the, in every day, living your friends, your family, your doctors, the media, just all the things. And then just pairing that with how you are inside, which your, what your own thoughts are, your emotions, your body, your weight, just all the internal things in your spirit. Okay. And is blending that together and making the best decision for you because it is different for everyone. Okay. So just recognize and listen to yourself. You're in, you're in, you're out of wisdom, just trusting yourself. Okay.

(19:18):

So as good to think about these things as you're eating and as you're doing your meal prep and the meal prep, definitely I believe is a great tool. Okay. To help you eat mindfully and mindful eating is different than dieting. Okay? So in order to get this to be more lifelong in lifestyle, mindful eating can help you trust yourself instead of using just willpower, because you want this to last, sometimes on a diet, it's like a quick fix. Like I want to use five pounds for an event, but you want it. If you have to lose five pounds, that's okay. But you don't want to do like a crash diet. Okay. Where it's like, you're just going to do something. I'm just going to not eat or pick up a fad diet that's happening right now. You just want to try to develop good eating habits so that it can last.

(20:11):

That's why a lot of times I say clean eating, I believe clean eating is a great option because it gives you more, gives you more bandwidth of what to do. You're not just restricted because it's not really good to restrict anything unless you have to, for a reason, because your body's going to crave it. You have to make up for what's missing somewhere else. So if you're trying to reduce your carbs, you can't eliminate all carbs. Okay? It's not healthy. You know, you want to get your carbs from somewhere else. So there's just different ways to do things. And also listening to your internal cues about your body, just listening to your body about what it wants when you're hungry. Instead of just being like, I am scheduled to eat at this precise time. Okay. Because you might not be hungry. Your body might not need anything at that time.

(21:02):

And you just put in calories in that you don't need at that precise moment. Okay. Accepting yourself and acceptance. Like, um, we don't need to talk about, don't eat this a lot of times I'll be like, eat more of this, make it more of a positive situation. Okay. Let's make eating more positive, light load, more green vegetables on your plate. Instead of saying, take out that, okay. Like adding in is it's more, we always want to think about things and make it a, more of a happier, positive experience because when you enjoy it and it's more pleasurable, you wind up doing it. Okay. Cause when you, when you're like not looking forward to something, you will eventually stop. So you have to enjoy it. You know, and mindfully, it is more flexible compared to being really restrictive and fulfilling and making it a lifestyle. We want to celebrate food because food is because of you or dieting alone.

(21:59):

And there's no mindset work and you're not doing a whole system around it. 95% of people that are, go on diets gain the way back. So it's not just about eat this, eat that it's, it's a whole lifestyle. You have to restructure your mind, retrain your mind. So to speak, you have to be ready. It's just like, it's like a whole gamut of things. So it's not just about, I'm going to do this right now. Because even say, for example, if you're on a keto diet and you lost weight, eventually you're going to have to reintroduce something and you have to be prepared to do that. And your mindset has to be okay. I mean, I know people that have had surgeries to lose weight, then they lost weight, but mentally they wasn't prepared for and they gain the weight back. So that's an investment that somebody made and then it turned around and in the end they felt really bad, you know, because they sat there and went through all that.

(22:56):

And they were like super happy in the beginning. And then they gained the weight back because they weren't prepared for it, their mindset wasn't right. They wasn't ready. So you have to do all the work, you know, it's, it's just not one component. You can do it. And I know you can because we all can do it. You just have to be ready just to do it all the pieces. Okay. Pick us food is addictive. I mean, it's not a narcotic or alcohol, but it has the same addictive Kobe capabilities. Like a lot of times you need a sugar detox. There's a reason that people say that because your body is used to consuming that sugar. You know? So it's, it's a whole thing. Definitely be done. You'd have to believe in yourself and just do the work that's with anything in life. Right. So sometimes you got to through a withdrawal, you know, you don't think like that when it's about food, but that's real. And then sometimes you're addicted to food. I mean, there's so many nations out there. It's no different, okay. It's just not right.

(24:00):

And it's not about the way you look it's about your health. Okay. You know, so sometimes if you are looking to lose weight or increase your energy or something, and you're scrolling on social media and you feel certain kind of way, just unfollow that person. Okay. Because they don't want to get stuck because then you'll feel down on yourself and we don't want that file. People that inspire you. They empower you to make you feel good about yourself, because that is so important. Okay. So along with your mindful eating, you could journal about your experience, things you come up when you're sitting there peacefully or what you're eating and you can keep track of it. Like in my room is there, I have like a nourishment section Reiki, write down your food intake so you can keep track of it. And then just doing some physical activity, just moving your body.

(24:52):

Right. Everybody's physical level of activities, different. Sometimes just walking sometimes in a beautiful day. It's just good to just walk you and it helps digest your food, right? Yes. It's just enjoyable now that it is spring sort of spring. Anyway, it'll start getting warmer and it's just a perfect time just to get out and enjoy nature. Okay. It's just, it just brings it all together. Doesn't it? Yes. It just brings it all together. Okay. So I hope this helped you guys so mindful eating. What does help you eat more healthy, just paying attention to your food, making it enjoyable and just getting the nutrients that you need for your body and your mind. Okay. And don't forget, you're more than welcome to reach out to me. Okay. And also I have a Facebook group that you're more than welcome to be a part of a health and wellness community. You can just go to Bitly for risks, clash, wellbeing, group, and all the information, how you can reach out to me. It's also in the show notes. Okay guys, until next time.