Mindfulness How do you eat your meal ? Part 1: speed and perception/excuses

Sounds like a silly question but is not

With my personal experience talking with colleagues and psychologist in my team I found that
The psychological side while making long term lifestyle changes is always underrated

Is not only about calories and numbers.

We need to consider how these calories are introduced.
These tips might help to be more mindful and self aware in this journey which is never meant to be a temporary extreme diet, instead has to be a doable/keepable change aiming for a long term success.

SPEED:

How quickly do you eat?

Think about your different meals and snacks during the day and simply try to:

- slow down

- enjoy more the food

- chew longer and taste more the food you are having 

These small things will actually make a difference at the end of the day:

- You will notice how you don't need to always finish everything on the plate.

- Keep always your health as first reason for anything, wasting food is never ok but better than overeating each time, and just keep in mind to make a smaller portion the next time to avoid wasting

- Tasting food makes you aware that sometimes food that you think you like a lot are actually just a habit

A practical example with one of my patient:

After following this advice she noticed that crisps are not actually that great and irreplaceable:

First of all tasting and chewing more make her aware that the amount of salt was horrendous and she could not actually taste the flavour of the crisps because the salt was covering it all, and now she is not craving that anymore.

In conclusion, she now has crisps rarely and not few packets everyday like she used to do as habit

EXCUSES/PERCEPTION:

Time could be an excuse to not apply all of the previous advice mentioned

But if you plan ahead and prepare yourself for the next day, there won't be anything that can stop you from doing this.

If you are in a rush, for instance during a lunch break:
 Bring your own meal from home or just having a smaller portion which will make easier to follow all of the previous recommendation.

Doesn't matter if one day you really don't have time, remember to back on track from the next meal, we are always talking about a lifestyle change so won't be a SINGLE meal to stop you from achieving results at the end of the month or year or longer!