Why Eat Mindfully?
If you’ve ever reached for a handful of popcorn while watching Netflix or had so much pizza you thought you might explode, it’s likely you were overeating mindlessly. This means you were reaching for food for reasons other than hunger.
Conversely, if you have swung in the opposite direction and restricted your eating (such as when following a diet), you are also not consciously or intuitively deciding on what and how much to eat. Rather, you are following prescribed rules that are normally designed to help you lose weight.
If you’re like many people, you switch between an Overeating Cycle and a Restrictive Eating Cycle. This is not only stressful to your lifestyle, it can be harmful to your body and mind.
Mindful eating is an approach that brings compassionate awareness to your food habits, the reasons you eat and the nutritional choices you make (or fall into).
Why Do Diets Fail?
When you’re eating restrictively, you may look “controlled” on the outside but your thoughts are still about food.
The Restrictive Eating Cycle is not sustainable in real life for most people. Stressors and triggers may overwhelm you, usually leading to the end of the diet.
Would you stick with something that doesn’t feel good for very long? Do you think you’d be able to stay in a Restrictive Eating Cycle forever?
Eat-Repent-Repeat Cycle
Many people switch between the Restrictive and Overeating Cycles. We call this the Eat-Repent-Repeat Cycle (also known as yo-yo dieting). There may be days, months, or even years between cycles or you can switch back and forth within the same meal.
Can you relate: When you’re being “good” you feel deprived; when you’re eating what you want, you feel guilty?
This is a stressful way to live! In the long term, it can cause harm to your body too.
The way to find the middle ground again is to use the Mindful Eating Cycle to guide you back to a place where you are in charge. You get to make decisions about when, what, how, and how much you eat and where you invest your energy.
How Mindful Eating Helps
In an Overeating Cycle, we react mindlessly in response to environmental and emotional triggers.
There’s nothing wrong with eating popcorn while watching Netflix, but it’s a good example of how strong the link can be between a stimulus and a response.
If you always eat popcorn on the couch in front of the TV, that becomes a habit. It may even be a habit that you enjoy—though after the first few kernels, most of us consume the rest mindlessly, right?
Mindfulness allows you to pause before you respond to the trigger—which gives you response-ability.
This awareness then starts to break the eat-repent-repeat (yo-yo dieting) cycle.
Break the Yo-Yo Dieting Cycle with Mindful Eating
Eating mindfully has so many benefits. Breaking a harmful dieting cycle is just one of them.
Are you ready to dive deep into mindful eating?
My 8-week workshop is now open for enrolments. I’d love to invite you into my next Mindful Eating Program today.
I’ll show you how to use the Mindful Eating Cycle to get to the roots of old food habits, BREAK THEM, implement new skills and strategies, and think in an entirely new way about food.
I’ll help you to overcome the need for restriction, deprivation and rigidity, and solve problems that you might have once tried to soothe with food.
Perfection is NOT necessary!
Not sure if it’s for you? Schedule a free health breakthrough session with me now and you can chat with me directly about the program, or about my 1:1 personalized health coaching for women.
I’d also love for you to join my mailing list so I can invite you to my next mindful eating workshop. Get your free mini course in the form below and I will be in touch!
You can read more of my blogs on mindful eating here.
