Have you ever dined on last night’s leftovers standing at the sink? How about eating peanut butter straight from the jar or gulping milk from the carton in front of the open refrigerator?
If this sounds like normal behavior, you could be a mindless eater. And chances are it’s having an adverse effect on both your weight and general well-being.
Mindless eating causes us to “lose the satisfaction, both physically and emotionally, that food can provide,” said Linda Paulk Buchanan, founder and co-clinical director of Atlanta Center for Eating Disorders. The consequences include not feeling satisfied, so food stays on our minds, leading to weight gain and contributing to the obesity problem for both children and adults.
“People who are too busy to eat throughout the day tend to make poor choices when they are really hungry and overeat at night,” Buchanan said.
Nearly everyone with a busy lifestyle has seen its effects: Eating in the car, eating at work desks or skipping meals entirely because there’s no time to eat. There are many factors that turn people into mindless eaters.
Getting too hungry before mealtime, getting distracted while eating, snacking in the car and dining on oversized restaurant portions can affect how much people eat. So do emotional states “such as boredom, loneliness and anxiety,” Buchanan said.
Perhaps no one understands this better than food scientist and author Brian Wansink, author of “Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think.” He is especially intrigued with how peoples’ environments influence them to consume more food than they realize. He studies the hidden cues that shape what and how much people eat. Some of his findings on portion distortion have influenced changes in the food industry — such as the creation of the 100-calorie snack pack.
“I grew up in Iowa in the middle of the food-farm belt, and I love to eat,” Wansink said in an interview. “Yet I’ve found that while food is a great source of pleasure, it is also a source of great concern. People seem very troubled by why they ate, what they ate or how much they ate. I realized that if I could shed some light on some of these choices, I might be able to make people eat less, eat better and enjoy it more.”
Wansink’s research shows that the average person makes around 250 food decisions every day, and most people cannot explain their choices.
“Eating in America has little to do with hunger and more to do with family and friends, packages and plates, names and numbers, labels and lights, colors and candles, shapes and smells, distractions and distances, and cupboards and containers,” he said. “By understanding how our environment influences our food habits, we can reduce the number of calories we eat each day without deprivation.”
Being aware of the triggers isn’t enough, because they are simply too powerful to resist, and it shouldn’t be a full-time job. The key is to rearrange your environment so you’re more aware of what you eat, and enjoy the experience more.
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BECOME A MINDFUL EATER
Linda Paulk Buchanan, co-clinical director of Atlanta Center for Eating Disorders, and eating behavior expert Brian Wansink offer these tips for breaking the habit of mindless eating:
— Eat at regular times. Rhythms are important in everything we do, from sleep to eating, so try to eat fairly consistently each day.
— Avoid other distractions while eating, except for music and conversation.
— Start your meal with “grounding” statements such as “I’m getting ready to eat” to set the tone and focus on the activity.
— Eat off a plate, not out of the package, and sit at a table for meals.
— Rate your hunger from 1 to 10, with 1 being extremely famished and 10 being that “post Thanksgiving” feeling. Eat when you are at a 2 or 3 and stop eating when you are at a 7 or 8.
— Put your fork down between bites and chew each mouthful thoroughly before picking up your fork.
— End the meal with an awareness of fullness and make a closing statement, like “I’m feeling satisfied and the meal is over.”
