Tag Archive for: distracted eating

Ditch the Distractions—The Downside to Distracted Eating

Do you find yourself scarfing down breakfast on your drive to work, or sitting down in front of the TV to enjoy your dinner?

If the answer is yes—you’re probably a victim of distracted eating! With the hustle and bustle of our everyday lives, it can seem nearly impossible to sit down in silence with no distractions for a proper meal.

However, there have been several studies looking at the impacts of distracted eating. From overeating to not remembering what and how much you ate—the consequences to what seems insignificant can be serious.

To help ditch the distractions, it’s time to look toward mindfulness.

What Distracted Eating Looks Like

Engaging in distracted eating is the norm of our society today.

Do any of these circumstances sound familiar?

  • Eating breakfast in the car on the way to work
  • Eating lunch while seated in your cubical or desk
  • Scrolling through your phone while eating your mid-day snack
  • Watching a television show or movie during dinner time

These are all prime examples of what is known as “distracted eating”.

I myself have fallen into the trap of distracted eating…I’ll share this story on my Live Training today. Access it HERE or HERE at 12:15 pm EST.

 

Definition of Distracted Eating

The “intentional consumption of a meal while engaged in a secondary activity to the extent that the significance or memory of the meal is diminished or forgotten completely.” (Reference: https://faseb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com)

With the hustle and bustle  and fast paced environment many of us live in—taking time to sit down and properly enjoy a meal is often thrown to the wayside. And, our society praises busyness, hustle culture and being “productive” at all hours of the day no matter what. Even when people seem to have time in their routine for a proper meal—the distractions still seem to pop up like scrolling through Instagram or Facebook or watching TV.

What the Studies Show

Many studies have looked at the impact of eating while distracted. The concluding results are as follows.

Those who eat distracted are more likely to…

  • Eat faster, and more food than intended.
  • Can’t remember what or how much you ate.
  • Snack on more foods later on or plate more food than you’d usually eat.
  • Feel significantly less full at the end of a meal.

These kinds of results make total sense because along with your hunger and fullness cues—attention and memory also play a role in the eating experience.

Your memory of what you ate and how much you ate will likely be impacted if you are eating while distracted. This usually results in eating more at your next meal or snacking because you have left your previous meal unsatisfied.

Although eating while distracted could mean overeating and feeling less satisfied after a meal—it also takes away from the enjoyment and pleasure the eating experience usually brings.

It’s time to ditch the distractions and focus on the meal in front of you. And while I get that eating without any distraction is possibly impractical—it’s all about taking baby steps in the right direction.

 

Tips to Reduce Distracted Eating

(1) Put your phone or computer in another room while you’re eating.

(2) If engaging in conversation, put your fork down periodically as a reminder to focus on the food in your mouth.

(3) Eat your meals at a table versus in the den or at your desk.

(4) Plan time for your meals—this will ensure you have plenty of time to enjoy the eating experience.

(5) Check in with your hunger and fullness throughout the meal to minimize autopilot eating.

How will you reduce distraction at your next meal? Let me know in the comments below!

3 Ways to Create A Home Environment to Support Intuitive Eating

Among some of the challenge’s clients express as they move along on their Intuitive Eating journey is creating a home environment that encourages mindful eating. Many homes are set up in a way that promotes easy access to food, prompting mindless eating and snacking.

External Cues that Trigger Mindless Eating

Look around your house. What do you have at arm’s reach that you find yourself mindlessly snacking from?

Cookie jar on the counter?

Dish of nuts on the living room coffee table?

Cereal boxes lined up on the counter?

Growing up, my mom always had a dish of nuts on the living room coffee table. Come to think of it, she still does. And my grandmother always had a candy dish on her living room table. I guess that’s where my mom got it from. I always used to think that this is the “proper” way to set up a home.

The only problem with this is that it encourages “refuse-not” unconscious eating. What does this mean? Let’s explore.

Refuse-Not Unconscious Eating

The “refuse-not” unconscious eating style is just as it sounds. You eat what you see regardless of whether you are hungry or not.

Consider a work meeting. You and your colleagues are sitting around the conference room table and centered in the middle are plates of mini danishes and cookies. As the meeting is going on, you reach for a danish, and then a cookie and then another etc. You don’t even consciously realize you are doing it. Until you do.

The same thing can happen at home. You walk in the house and into the kitchen. Your daughter had started to eat a muffin, but left some over on the kitchen table. As you open the mail, you start nibbling on the muffin. When it’s gone, and you’ve finished reading the mail, you realize you just ate the muffin, mindlessly.

Mindful Eating as Part of the Intuitive Eating Journey

Mindful Eating and Intuitive Eating are different. Yet, mindful eating is a part of the Intuitive Eating journey.

Here are 3 tips to set up a mindful home environment:

  1. Put All Foods in their Designated Places

While you may not literally have a cookie jar on the counter, look around your kitchen and home and see where you have food “hanging out”. Then make a plan to put all foods away in the cabinet. This will cut down on the mindless picking and snacking.  And when you’re hungry for a fuel snack (or even a fun snack), you know where to go.

Remember, it’s not about the food. It’s about the how of eating.

  1. Store Leftovers in Opaque Containers

I always advise my clients to store their leftovers in opaque containers. Why? If those leftovers are in clear containers front and center of the fridge, you may feel tempted to “take another forkful” as you remember how yummy it was at dinner. Therefore, once you’ve enjoyed the food mindfully at dinner, go ahead and store them away in opaque containers towards the back of the fridge, and know that they will be there for you tomorrow to enjoy.

Here’s something to think about. If you eat when you are not hungry, you don’t have as much pleasure from the food as when you do when you are comfortably hungry.

  1. Create an Inviting Eating Space

I have a client who would eat her meals at the kitchen table in between piles of newspapers and mail of the day. This led to lots of distracted and mindless eating for her.

While you may not have a formal dining room table, you likely have a table somewhere in your home that you sit down to meals at. Take the time to reserve this eating space for only eating, and not doing work or piling the days mail. A cluttered space takes away from eating enjoyment and creates a distracted eating environment.

The Intuitive Eating journey is all about listening to your body. There are things that can disrupt that attunement process. Creating a home environment that supports your journey is an important step you can take and is key to success.

Busy woman eating at her desk

4 Triggers to a Challenging Food Day (and Strategies to Try)

You’ve been traveling along your intuitive eating journey and making progress. You remember that it’s not about perfection, instead it’s about learning and growing. You have done great work in rejecting the diet mentality and recognizing the diet culture messages that swarm all around you.

 

So why does food feel so difficult today? Why are you feeling blah in your body today?

 

The answer might very well lie in one of 4 triggers that I see often when working with clients.

 

Mindless eating

Do you find yourself eating without full attention to what or how much you are eating? This is mindless eating. You may go through your day not even realizing that you picked on the cake on the counter, ate from the chocolate bowl on your bosses’ desk, or popped several grapes in your mouth each time you passed through the kitchen.

 

When you engage in mindless eating, you are not eating to satisfy a physical hunger and at some point, you feel it in your body. Perhaps you feel sluggish, bloated, or tired. Then you blame the food and vow to be “good” the rest of the day (or tomorrow!).

 

Strategy to try: Call yourself out each time you find yourself engaging in mindless eating. Bring yourself back into the present moment and name the behavior. You will find, over time, that you are no longer mindlessly eating.

 

Distracted eating

Watching TV while you eat dinner? So many people do. This, however, is distracted eating and it prevents you from appreciating your meal, tuning in to your fullness signals and having full satisfaction.

You might tell me that eating while watching TV slows down your eating, and maybe it does. But it is still distracted eating and your body views distraction as stress which triggers the fight or flight response which effects your digestion and absorption of nutrients.

Looking at your cell phone, eating at your desk while working, reading or sending texts, and reading the newspaper, a book or the mail is also distracted eating.

 

Strategy to try: Make a commitment to yourself that you will not watch TV during dinner. If your spouse wants the TV on, calmly explain to him/her why it’s important to you that the TV be off. Do not bring your phone to the table, and save the reading for after dinner.

 

Lack of planning

I’ve said many times on my blog, in my videos and in Facebook Lives that planning is not dieting. That is, if you can roll with the punches and be flexible. If planning meals means you put pressure on yourself to “follow” the plan and if you “can’t”you break out in a sweat, then we should talk. That’s still dieting.

Without proper meal planning, you run the risk of grabbing food on the go, popping through the drive through, or maybe even skipping dinner and mindlessly snacking instead.

To me, as a busy working mom, I have to plan meals or my family (and me) won’t have food at the ready. So, think ahead to your week and what you might want to eat for dinners. Make a shopping list so you have the necessary ingredients on hand. Write out your plan if it helps and prep ahead as much as possible.

My freezer is really my best friend. I often cook extra and freeze for a future meal. I always think tonight about what I want to have tomorrow night so that when I get home from work (or my kids get home from school and I’m working late) there is a dinner ready to go.

Strategy to try: Plan a few dinners for the week ahead of time, go shopping to have the ingredients in the house and give thought to what you can prep ahead of time.

 

Emotional eating

You are human which means you have emotions! And yes, sometimes, you might consciously acknowledge that you’re feeling sad (fill in any emotion here) and a bowl of ice cream would really help you to feel better.

This in my opinion, is not of issue.

But when the first and only way you cope with difficult emotions is to turn to food, then this is an unhealthy behavior that needs to be addressed.

If you are having a challenging food day, give thought if perhaps you are using food to numb, sedate and distract you from some underlying emotions that you’d rather not feel.

Strategy to try: Seek support to help you identify your emotional eating triggers and learn how to customize your strategies to best cope with the emotions without turning to food. For more info on overcoming emotional eating, check this out!

 

As you look over the above triggers to a challenging food day, which do you resonate with most? Let me know below!

The Negative Effect of T.V. on Eating Pleasure

TV watching - LaurenThis past Sunday was a busy day. I’m sure you have busy days too. But what I experienced Sunday really brought what I teach my clients to life.

 

My day started off cleaning out our storeroom. I’ve been after my husband for a long time to do this, so I was so glad we began this adventure. We then had some errands to do, and eventually we dropped my daughter off at her friend’s house for a birthday party.

 

The party was for 2 hours and it was a distance from our home. We wanted to hang out in the area and just go back and pick her up at the end of the party. We found a nice park to walk around and it was beautiful.

 

We decided to find a place to eat dinner, as it would be too late to eat when we got home. So, we went into a local restaurant, seemed nice enough. I ordered food at the counter, my husband went to find a table. When I brought the food over, I noticed that our table was right under a television hanging on the wall. I looked around and realized my husband chose this table because it was the only table available.

 

As I began to eat my chopped salad filled with artichokes, hearts of palm, egg whites, sun dried tomatoes and mandarin oranges, I was feeling very out of touch with my eating experience. I quickly realized that the T.V. blasting above my head was taking away from the pleasure in my meal. I was frustrated and wondered why on earth this restaurant needs to have a T.V. on in the dining area. Yes, it’s casual dining, but really? Doesn’t the restaurant owner know anything about mindful eating?

 

Apparently not.

 

I concentrated on my inner satiety signals, wanting to be sure I didn’t miss comfortable satiety. I took a few more bites and told my husband I was finished. I packed up the rest to take home.

 

As we were driving home, I thought about this experience. I was looking forward to this delicious salad, but the distraction and noise from the T.V. took away from my pleasurable experience. What a shame. Had I not been aware of this, I would have probably gone home and looked for food, anything to achieve satisfaction.

 

A lesson learned. I won’t be going back to that eating establishment any time soon.

 

Your turn to take action: Have you had a similar eating experience? Please share below.