You’re not going to starve! The Habit of eating mindfully
What exactly is a habit? A habit is a routine of behavior that is repeated regularly and tends to occur subconsciously. The American Journal of Psychology defined a "habit, from the standpoint of psychology, [as] a more or less fixed way of thinking, willing, or feeling acquired through previous repetition of a mental experience.” So clearly, humans are all creatures of habit. There is evidence to this in most of what we do. Everyday we get up, go to the bathroom and most likely brush our teeth. We do these things out of necessity and out of habit. And then we begin our day. Where we go from here is entirely up to our own design. We make choices that either align with our goals or sabotage them. Why is it so hard to just stick to “the plan?”
The human body is truly amazing. We are capable of so many things and the body is designed to be adaptable to allow us to do those things. We get injured, we heal. We get a cold and then we get well again. We expect this. When we don’t heal, or when we don’t get well, we are often frustrated and disappointed. “Come on body-do your thing! Why are you letting me down this time?”
We need to do our part in taking care of our body so that our body can do its best job. This becomes more and more obvious as we age. The body just doesn’t seem to rebound in health and healing the way it did when we were younger. So what can we do? Obviously, there are many things we all know we could be doing better. But for starters, we need to do a better job at letting our body inform us. We need to listen to our body! Our body tries to talk to us, but we have stopped listening!
How often do you find yourself saying to another person or maybe to yourself: “I’m starving! I need to eat something!” Have you ever survived that moment without immediately eating or do you always act on that “feeling?” Here’s the thing: more than likely you are not actually starving. I am all about feeding the body for fuel when we need it, but eating just because the lunch bell is tolling is not a good habit. Young children are typically much better than adults at this: they tend to eat only when they really need to fuel up! The other things like eating out of boredom or stress just don’t factor in for kids-(yet!) At what point in our lives did we lose this keen connection to identifying real hunger vs. habitual, mindless, eating behavior?
Like most habits-they’re hard to break. You’ve been behaving this way for a long time! Change is simply not going to happen over night. For starters, when you find yourself inclined to eat, pause for a moment. Ask yourself: am I eating because I’m hungry? Am I eating because I’m bored, anxious, sad? If you’re about to eat because honestly you are hungry-go for it! But if it’s for any other reason than real hunger-don’t! Eating won’t make those problems go away. Brush your teeth, drink some water, have a cup of tea, organize a drawer in your house, throw in some laundry, go for a walk, call a friend—these are behaviors to combat feelings of stress, boredom, or loneliness! Also important to note: it’s ok to be a little hungry! You are not going to starve if you sit with the feeling of hunger for a beat longer than you typically would before acting on it. There’s so much confusing information out there: when to eat; what to eat; what not to eat. “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!” No! “Intermittent fasting is the way to go!” Which is correct? How do you know what’s the right choice? First and foremost: trust your body. Feed it nutrient dense, unprocessed foods when it wants it! If you really key into this you will eat when you’re actually hungry. You’ll eat until satisfied-not stuffed and you’ll make choices that make your body feel good. There are good habits and bad habits and they take time to develop and time to undo. There’s no time like the present to start carving out some new, healthy, mindful good, eating habits. Your body will thank you too! ❤️