It’s difficult to be mindful when eating socially at the best of times, and the holidays make it that much harder. You’re surrounded by all these special foods you don’t usually have, and you’ve got many social events crammed into a short period. How do you stay mindful and not go overboard with eating during all these events? Here are 5 tips to help. Tip 1: Have a Plan Planning may not seem to relate to mindful eating, but as I’ve written before, it helps to have some kind of guide or intention when you go to gatherings. You won’t be planning everything that you’ll eat, of course. You may not even know what foods will be available, or exactly when you’ll be eating. But here are a few guidel
I saw a cartoon recently that said, with the holidays approaching, “it’s almost time to put the ol’ scale into hibernation for the winter.” It made me laugh, but it also got me thinking about how so many people go overboard with eating during the holidays and then try to recover in January with diets. Some of them might put the scale away, or some might weigh themselves and be depressed by what they see when they do this. The problem is, focusing on weight isn’t the best measurement. Having a lower weight, what a doctor might consider “ideal,” doesn’t make you the picture of health. Nor does having a higher weight mean that you’re in terrible health – especially if a lot of that weight comes
If you’re like me, you might still be in shock that it’s November and that the holidays are coming up. Even though Thanksgiving is late this year, Christmas items are out in stores, holiday movies are playing, and people are making plans. Those plans always seem to include food, which makes this a difficult time for mindful eating. To help get through it, I suggest planning to use the 3 Rs. These aren’t Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle, but instead a slightly modified version. Reduce, Reuse, and Refuse. Reduce This one is fairly straightforward, even if it’s not always easy to do. This is simply to reduce the amount that you might normally eat, or that you might be expected to eat. This works best
I’ve recently started watching Grey’s Anatomy (only a decade or so late), and in the episode “Enough is Enough,” a man goes into the hospital after having swallowed 10 doll heads (!). At one point, Meredith Grey asks him, “Why does eating doll heads fill you up? What's the satisfaction?” She doesn’t get an answer, but it got me thinking about how we often eat things we don’t need because we’re looking for something to fill us up. Most of us don’t go to those lengths, but even when we don’t, we may be trying to fill some need that’s not about food. How, then, do you tell if what you’re eating has filled you up, or if there’s something else that might give you the satisfaction you’re craving?
