Mindful Eating: Enjoy a Healthy Relationship with Food
If you want to transform your eating habits and relationship with food, my Mindful Eating service can help you to do that.
- Are you battling with mindless eating or binge eating?
- Would you like to fix your relationship with food, but don't know where to start?
- Do you enjoy healthy foods but find it hard to eat in a balanced, consistent way?
- Are you done with dieting, and in need of a fresh approach for real, lasting change?
- Are you overwhelmed with or confused about all the nutritional information and diet advice out there, and wanting some clear, common sense advice?
- Are you ready to do the mindset work that diet plans haven't taught you, and discard any unhelpful beliefs, attitudes and behaviours around eating, nutrition and weight loss that have been keeping you stuck, so that you can start eating normally without guilt, food rules and calorie counting?
Start Changing The Way You Think And Behave Around Food
If you’ve tried all the diets and always end up back where you started, or you feel like you need to improve your relationship with food, there is a solution that will help you to set up new, sustainable eating habits and enable you to confidently let go of calorie counting, diet rules and food guilt.
The reason many weight loss diet plans are hard to stick to isn’t just due to lack of willpower- it’s because they’re often too restrictive, and when you combine this with an impatience for quick results and a lack of knowledge of mindful eating, emotional eating and nutrition, many diet plans inevitably don’t work. It can be a complete waste of time and effort trying to rigidly stick to a diet plan if, once the weight has come off, the person goes back to their usual eating habits. This is the problem with methods that provide a weight loss solution only, without considering all of the other key elements that might need addressing too.
My Three-Pronged Strategy
I encourage clients to explore three key areas in relation to their eating habits and relationship with food, to provide a more effective, sustainable outcome:-
1. Mindless habits: teaching mindful eating concepts and practises
2. Emotional eating: helping a person to understand and address why they eat- if food is used as a coping mechanism; it may also include exploring body image issues
3. Nutrition and physiology: improving the client’s knowledge about important biological processes which play a crucial role in weight management potential, happiness levels, motivation levels, energy levels and general health and well-being, which in turn influences eating habits. These include insulin, fat storage mechanisms, stress hormones, appetite hormones, sex hormones and even gut health. It can really help to motivate a person to make better food choices once they’ve gained deeper insight into the benefits of healthier options, whilst knowing that they don’t have to completely cut out any particular foods.
1. Mindful Eating
Mindful Eating is about engaging the senses to be present with food, making conscious decisions before and during eating to help you make better food choices, and cultivating eating habits that are in your own best interest so that when you’ve finished a meal, you have a good sense of well-being, even peace, knowing that you’ve made an enjoyable, satisfying and nutritious food choice without feeling stuffed. It’s also about listening to the body and being aware of how, why, and how much you eat. It’s not about perfect eating, but approaching food with a flexible, curious and relaxed mindset. Many people I meet don’t trust themselves around food and have a strong inner critic which can make them feel bad about themselves, drive feelings of guilt or cause them to self-sabotage.
Mindful eating teaches people about a more ‘middle-way’, flexible approach to eating, to help them escape the yo-yo dieting trap and to reduce feelings of guilt around food, which can result from an ingrained categorisation of foods as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Mindless eating is often linked to overeating, and overeating doesn’t necessarily equate to enjoyment. The aim of mindful eating is to start enjoying less food more, through satisfying eating experiences. My blog post ‘Principles Of Mindful Eating’ illustrates some key concepts.
2. Emotional Eating: Can Prevent Problem-Solving
Each person has their own unique history, lifestyle and needs, which are key factors when exploring a person’s eating habits and relationship with food. Therefore it’s really important to look at the ‘whole picture’. This includes exploring not just their eating habits but also body image, lifestyle, including stress levels and sleep patterns, mental health and general well-being, physical health, self-esteem/self-concept, past experiences/childhood, history of dieting, personality, and life satisfaction.
Emotional eating typically happens when a person isn’t actually hungry, but they’re turning to food because they’re looking for some kind of comfort or ‘solution’. The problem with emotional eating is that it doesn’t solve problems- it tends to only alleviate discomfort temporarily, and is often followed by guilt and shame. Eating can become an easy, knee-jerk alternative to problem-solving, but it can perpetuate a sense of powerlessness or helplessness in an individal- it can put a delay between something they don’t want to do or address, and temporarily put them in a bubble or help them disengage with or escape from what’s going on around them. Eating can therefore become a sticking plaster and keep a person operating at a surface level. Whilst it may help them to have a break or feel calm for a few moments, it might mean that they avoid doing something else that would serve them better, such as communicating their needs or starting a difficult task. As people start to problem solve and address their needs, they often find that their compulsive eating diminishes. Read more about how to stop emotional eating.
3. Nutrition And Physiology: The Types Of Foods That Can Make Us Fat
People don’t get addicted to food. But they can get addicted to ultra processed food (UPF). These foods tend to be stripped of their natural fibre and contain white flour and/or sugar, and saturated fat. Examples include biscuits, cakes, pastries, chocolate, breads and dessert. In general, UPFs don’t fill us up, so they’re easy to overeat. To process the sugars in foods, the body produces insulin, which is vital for keeping blood sugar levels at an optimum level, but in excess it can lead to fat storage in the body and insulin resistance (a precursor to diabetes). This is why it’s important to look at what your meals and snacks contain, not just the calorie content.
UPFs are manufactured in a way that makes them hyperpalatable, irresistable and very easy to overeat, whereas foods in their more natural state don’t have that effect, making it easier for us to eat them in moderation. Note: there is ultra processed food (lots of ingredients) and minimally/moderately processed food (the food is still largely in its original form, such as baked beans or plain yogurt, and can be nutritious).
Teaching clients about how they can keep their blood sugar levels stable throughout the day, as well as helping them with lifestyle strategies to maintain good energy levels, achieve a positive sense of well-being and manage stress are an integral part of helping a person with their eating and weight management goals.
