Eat Cheap, Eat Well, Eat Up!

An empty bowl is an invitation to focus on what you eat.

Next up on our tour of food-related New Year’s resolutions is what some people call mindful eating, or what I consider simply paying attention to what you eat. Nichele Hoskins, a Birmingham, AL-based magazine editor, put it best when she sent me her 2009 resolutions: Avoid eating in transit, topped the list. Sounds simple, but if you’re an avid grazer (a k a snacker) like me, you first have to acknowledge how much mindless chowing you actually do. You know, those times when you find yourself nibbling on this or that because you’re kinda, sorta, well, not really hungry. Sound familiar? Hmm, I just ate a scone while folding laundry. In fact, when I think about it, most of my eating is done while doing something else.

Evenings have been a downfall for David Mark, a consultant who specializes in nutrition research and development.. “No calories of any sort after dinner,” Mark vows for the coming year, to avoid mindless eating and reduce the likelihood of bedtime acid reflux.

Nichele’s and David’s seemingly small goals are powerful. Essentially, they involve avoiding situations where you eat while engaged in another activity, such as driving, working, reading, watching TV, or noodling on the Internet. 

Nichele’s goal: Avoid eating in transit. That’s a simple, yet powerful goal that can help short-circuit mindless consumption. Eating while distracted makes it difficult to register when you’ve had enough.

Too many of us eat without taking notice too often. According to Brigham & Women’s Hospital, 66% of us regularly eat dinner in front of the TV (yep, guilty of that one). So what? Well, it turns out mindless munching could make the digestive process up to 40% less effective, not to mention create unwanted side effects like bloating, acid reflux, or just plain eating too much. Eating while distracted makes it difficult to register when you’ve had enough.

There are lots of ways to eat mindfully, some of them not really suited to everyday living (are you going to close your eyes and register every bite, or chew every bite 30 times? Not me). But there are some simple strategies to bring your attention back to the task.

• Eat with your nondominant hand to slow you down. (I can do that.)
• Don’t watch TV, read, drive, or troll the Internet while you eat. (This one will be tough; I love eating and reading or watching TV.)
• Serve up a proper portion on a plate. (Easy.)
• Sit down to eat. (Not so easy, if sitting down doesn’t also involve another activity.)
• Try to make the meal last 20 minutes. (That isn’t so long, but if you’re in the habit of bolting down your food, it will probably feel like forever at first.)
• Eat food you like. (I like this one–why waste time eating food you don’t enjoy?)

There are many triggers to mindless eating, as Cornell researcher Brian Wansink, PhD, can attest. He’s made a career of studying the psychology of eating–everything from how different-size plates influence how much we eat to why people consume more calories at Subway than they do at McDonalds. His (often surprising) findings are collected in his book and Web site Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think. I’ve signed up for his National Mindless Eating Challenge, which allows you to customize weekly and monthly goals to eat better and with more attention. Also check out Brian’s blog on the Prevention magazine Web site. Now, I am hungry, so I’m going to go eat something. Just eat, nothing else.

[Update: I had a carton of blueberry nonfat yogurt and managed to sit down while eating it (though I had to fight the urge to get up and at least walk around, maybe pet the dog). But it was tasty, and I did note my enjoyment of it. However, I caught myself reading the nutrition info on the carton, which was a bit of a cheat. At least I was reading about the food I was eating.]