The opposite of mindless eating is mindful eating.
We don’t know this, but half the time, our minds are seeking distractions. Could be just the passing of a moving vehicle, a scene outside our office window, or the makeup of a colleague.
Simple things like that can instantly take our minds from one focus to another, and while we may be able to stay more focused than distracted over a task, especially one with a deadline, it’s hard to keep our minds from wandering about when we most need to maintain calmness.
For instance, you notice you think up great ideas when you get in the shower or lie down to sleep, same thing when you’re about to eat.
In the moments when we most need to relax, our minds get distracted and that is why, among other reasons, we give in to mindless eating, without even knowing.
In this article, I have explained what mindless eating is, how it affects your weight loss journey, and how you can stop eating mindlessly.
Enjoy!
- what-is-mindless-eating?
- does-mindless-eating-affect-weight-loss?
- How can you stop eating mindlessly?
What Is Mindless Eating?
Simply put, mindless eating is a careless and unconscious way of eating.
Have you ever set the table to eat and in less than five minutes when you try to scoop up more food from your plate, you find that there’s no more food left, then to confirm your thoughts you actually take your eyes off the book, magazine, television, empty space or anywhere else your eyes had been all along, you look down on your plate and you find that truly there’s nothing there?
At some point in our lives, we’ve all been victims of mindless eating, be it at the cinema, a business meeting, a party, or in our homes.
When we eat without knowledge of how much, how fast, or how well we eat, we eat mindlessly, and though we may not know it, the way we eat plays a significant role in the way we live.
Does Mindless Eating Affect Weight Loss?
This might be insane to believe, but yes, mindless eating does affect weight loss and I’ll tell you how.
When we eat, it’s not just our mouth and digestive system that is involved, like we know, the brain controls all affairs of the body, and according to studies, twenty minutes into the time we begin to eat, our brain registers that we are full.
However, in eating mindlessly, you’re ninety percent likely to eat at a fast pace, so even before twenty minutes into your meal, you’re full, but because your brain doesn’t record this, you continue to feel unsatisfied, hence you eat more and by the time your brain records satisfaction, you’re already overfed, in other words, you’ve eaten more calories than you probably need.
This sets you back on your weight loss journey, making you not lose weight as you ought to.
How Can You Stop Eating Mindlessly?
The key to stopping mindless eating is to practice mindful eating.
How?
By doing the following:
- Get Rid of Every Distraction
In the age we live in, almost everybody eats with their eyes glued to their phones, TV, magazine, newspaper, or book.
It can be hard to unlearn old habits, but if you want to stop eating mindlessly, you need to clear your table of every form of distraction.
Also, you need to clear your mind. Your meal time is for eating, not for planning up strategies on how to build your firm or practice how to propose to your soulmate, do that after or before, not during.
- Eat Slow
When you’re not distracted by anything, eating slower than you used comes naturally, but even then, your pace might still be fast, so you need to consciously practice the act of eating slow so you don’t overfeed yourself, instead, you’ll be aware of when you’re full and know when to stop.
- Set A Timer
Setting your timer to know how long it takes you to complete a meal, is an effective trick to help you eat at a slow pace.
- Be Content
You also need to learn to be satisfied as soon as your body tells you it has had enough, and not stuff it with more food.
Takeaway
Mindless eating has become so common among us, but if we could just let go of old habits and go back to practicing table manners as we were taught when we were younger, we’ll notice a great improvement in our health and fitness.
Make it a challenge every day to remove every distraction, eat slowly and be content, that’s how you stop eating mindlessly.
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