Savor, Celebrate, and Pay Attention: 8 Lessons for Eating Better

I’ve spent most of my life on constant diets. For this reason, it has not been easy to overcome this habit.

In my house, when I was a kid, food was so restricted that my brothers and I learned to “steal” snacks and soda sip. My mother was always adopting diets and abandoning them for as long as I can remember, and unintentionally passed on this habit to me.

I loved my mother dearly, but one of the last conversations we had was about dieting. She was in a clinic for the dying, and I was on the Jenny Craig diet. My brother brought a bowl of microwave popcorn into the hospital room and I reached out for some. My mother scolded me lightly for skipping my diet. “Tara, you’re being naughty,” she said. I know they weren’t the last words she ever said to me, but that’s what I remember.

Since then, I’ve tried many things to lose weight—intermittent fasting, cutting calories, Whole30, and most recently, Noom. All of them seemed to me to be restrictive diets, but presented in different marketing packages. “Diet culture has changed so much that today even diet companies are saying ‘what we’re proposing is not a diet,'” commented Evelyn Tribole, a registered dietitian and co-author of “Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet”. Diet Approach”. “But they are diets, yes.”

There is growing scientific evidence that following restrictive diets makes you want to eat more, slows your metabolism and makes it even harder to lose weight in the future.

Tired of the diet roller coaster, a year ago I made the decision to never diet again. Instead, I focused my energy on practicing mindfulness, learning to meditate, and enjoying cooking.

The science of mindful eating

Any restrictive diet has never been proven to result in long-term, sustainable weight loss for most people who try them. Of course, there is only limited research on the effectiveness of non-dieting approaches, often described as mindful eating, intuitive eating, or harmonic eating.

What all of these approaches have in common is that they don’t restrict food but instead focus on paying attention to internal cues such as hunger, fullness, and cravings. But that takes practice. In one study, participants took at least 10 to 15 attempts — and, for many people, 38 or more — to try to reshape their eating behaviors through mindfulness.

A Brown University study of 104 overweight women found that mindfulness training reduced food consumption driven by cravings by 40%.

A review by scientists at Columbia University concluded that mindful eating training often produces at least one metabolic or heart health benefit, such as improved glycemic indices, lower cholesterol, or better blood pressure. A 2014 review of 20 mindful eating interventions showed improvements in psychological health, including less depression, more self-esteem, and better quality of life.

Set non-weight loss goals

While some people who practice mindful eating may end up losing weight, proponents say it’s best to start by listening to your body and becoming aware of how food makes you feel.

“Just try to pay attention when you eat,” said Judson Brewer, associate professor of behavioral and social sciences at Brown University’s School of Public Health.

Traci Mann, a psychologist at the University of Minnesota and author of “Secrets From the Eating Lab“, advises people to set new health goals unrelated to weight loss.

“Your goal might be to consume more vegetables, as they contain all the healthy things our bodies need,” she explained. “Whether the result is that it reduces your personal feelings of guilt or shame, makes you less stressed about your food, or makes you not diet, these are all excellent goals. It will make you healthier, even if don’t make him lose weight.”

Dr. Rudolph Leibel, a professor of medicine at the Institute of Human Nutrition at Columbia University, said he encourages his patients to pay attention to the metabolic effects of healthy eating and small weight loss, rather than focusing on how they look. “More modest losses are more sustainable than those that people often seek for aesthetic reasons.”

Lessons from the Eat Well Challenge

Asking myself a simple question—“how will I feel if I eat this?”—has helped me improve the quality of my diet without incurring the dangers of food restriction. To my surprise, I even lost some weight, although it was a very slow process. I’m still overweight, but stopping dieting and starting to eat mindfully has been liberating and giving me joy.

Tribole said one of the biggest struggles for people who constantly diet is to stop restricting food and start listening to the body instead. “People who come from a diet culture tend to be by rules,” she explained. “Diet is a deep break between you and your body, between you and trusting your body.”

Hundreds of readers have already contacted us to share what they learned after reforming their eating habits. For this, the last part of the Eat Well Challenge, I’m going to share some tips from readers on mindful eating below.

Eat on a nice plate: I love this tip for turning every everyday meal into a celebration. Creating a colorful and appetizing plate of food and enjoying the pleasure of cooking and eating are all ways to practice mindful eating. Studies suggest that the health benefits gained from a Mediterranean-style diet, which includes plenty of vegetables, olive oil and seafood, are likely to be intensified by the tendency of people in this region to enjoy and savor food with family and friends.

Stop doing other things while eating: Many readers have found that they are in the habit of looking at the phone, reading, working or watching TV while eating. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying your food while you’re watching the Super Bowl or watching movies with the family, but it’s easier to eat mindfully when your attention is focused on the meal. “The best thing I’ve discovered so far is the importance of taking your time and really being present while I eat,” one reader shared. “I put my phone or book somewhere else and really focus on how the food tastes, smells, feels and looks. I get a lot more pleasure from food when I taste it like this.”

Lower the fork: Several readers noted that once they became more aware of their eating habits, they noticed that they tended to grab a new forkful of food before they even finished chewing what they already had in their mouths. Learning to put their fork on their plate between bites helped them pay attention to the flavor and texture of the food, rather than the next bite.

Use a smaller plate: Many readers told us that using smaller plates helped them reduce portion sizes and stay tuned for their body’s hunger and satiety signals. If you are still hungry, you have the option of repeating the dish. “The plates used in the US are huge, and it’s very easy to fill the plate,” one reader shared. “And many of us were taught by our parents to clean our plates, so we don’t stop eating, even when we’re full.”

Never go to the market or supermarket hungry: Studies show that when people go grocery shopping on an empty stomach, they don’t buy more food – they buy more calorie-dense, less healthy foods. This is because when we are hungry, the brain reacts more to very sweet or salty foods.

Ride the wave of food cravings: For many readers, accepting that cravings for certain foods is normal has been a revelation. Evan Forman, a professor of psychology at Drexel University in Philadelphia and director of the university’s Center for Weight, Food and Lifestyle Science, teaches his clients how to “ride the wave” of food cravings —​that is, identify cravings. , observe how they feel and accept it, rather than trying to suppress it. “The simple visual concept of ‘surfing the wave’ has helped me immensely,” said one reader. “I used it three times last night so I wouldn’t give in to the after-dinner snack. It worked really well.”

Simply add vegetables: Some readers suggested adding more vegetables to meals rather than restricting other foods. “After having a daughter, I swore I would never go on a diet again, I would just eat healthy and stay active,” shared a reader who has been focusing on eating more vegetables. “I don’t want my daughter to be obsessed like I did, my friends and my sisters.”

sleep longer: Mindful eating has led several readers to become aware of a tendency to snack at night and to snack more when they stay up late. Several studies show that food can affect our sleep and that insufficient sleep can affect our eating habits.

Translation by Clara Allain.