Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Tools for Mindful Eating

Hey there everybody, and welcome to this presentation on cognitive behavioral tips for mindful eating. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. In this presentation, we'll identify common behaviors that cause overeating, poor nutrition and weight gain and explore strategies to address those behaviors. Now, it's important before you change your nutrition to always contact your doctor and and or a registered dietitian. These are general tips in order to improve your eating habits, if you will. So let's talk about some mindless eating behaviors that tend to cause people to either eat a lot of really low nutrition foods and then not have room for the high nutrition foods, or overeat and get a lot more calories than they want. Habit eating is one of the first and sometimes one of the most nefarious of our mindless eating behaviors. That is eating, because that's what you're supposed to do. Habit eating is when you're eating, you come in from work and you are in the habit of going straight to the refrigerator and getting something to eat and you don't know if you're hungry or not. You don't even check in with yourself to say, am I hungry? Do I need something to eat right now? It's just what you do. You get up in the morning, you make your coffee, you make breakfast. You don't even ask yourself, am I hungry right now? Some people will eat in the car. You know, they are used. They go to the grocery store and they get some junk food while they're at the grocery store and they bring that up to the front seat with them and, and leave the rest of the groceries in the back and they can consume a whole lot of calories between the store and getting home. Developing new habits is going to be important. Developing the habit of checking in with yourself before you eat. Am I hungry? What am I hungry for? But more than that, and we're going to talk about that one a little bit later, Getting into the habit of eating from a plate, not from a bag or a box or just the straight refrigerator, putting food on a plate and sitting at the table to eat. For a lot of people, that will cut down on a lot of their habit eating right there. If they have to put food on a plate and then go sit down, that's going to eliminate some of their mindless eating. The second one is distracted eating, eating while you're driving or while you're reading. When I was in college, I remember I used to eat and study at the same time and the food was good. I kind of vaguely remember eating it, but then I'd be finished with it and I'd be sad because I'm like, it's all gone already. I don't really remember eating it. Focus on the food. Don't eat while you're driving. Don't eat while you're doing something else. Don't eat while you're watching tv. Focus on the food. Think about if you're by yourself, think about the flavors, notice the textures. If you are eating with your family, talk about it. You don't have to talk about, oh, this feels kind of greedy. But, you know, think about what kind of seasonings are you tasting? I really like the taste, or tastes like you added more oregano or more parsley to this. You'll actually start to hone your palate a little bit more and discover that there are seasonings out there that you may like that you didn't know you liked for the longest time. I didn't think I really liked parsley. And straight parsley, not so much. But I really do like it in foods, especially with oregano in my lentil loaf. Rapid eating is another problem. It takes our brain a while, 20 minutes or so to register that we've eaten and register that we're full. When my son was little, he had really bad gastric reflux. So I would always, in our family, we call it wolfing down. I would wolf down my food in order to finish eating so I could hold him while my husband would eat. And when you eat that quickly, you don't chew it well, so you're actually not going to absorb as many of the nutrients, but you also don't taste it and you don't benefit from the flavors. And your body is not going to register that you've eaten until long after you've left the table. Some people eat rapidly because they don't want to be eating with the people that they're eating with. If you're in a disagreement with your significant other or you're a teenager and you're not wanting to sit at the. At the table with your family, people may eat rapidly, which again will cause them to wolf down their food. They won't notice that they've eaten. They won't have that feeling of satiation, that feeling of fullness, and it may lead them to eating more later on. And in some cases, people may eat rapidly due to competition. If you come from a big family, you. You may be familiar, familiar with this. People wanting to get that last roll or that last drumstick or the last whatever. So people would eat as quickly as possible so they could get the last one. And that can also contribute to mindless eating, where it's more of a power struggle. I wanted to have that last one. I'm not hungry anymore. But I wanted to make sure I was the one that got that last chicken leg or whatever it was. So what can you do? Arrange your environment so it is as calming as possible. Control your hunger. Sometimes people will eat rapidly if they let themselves get ravenous. And then it's just like, oh, my gosh, I'm so hungry. Control your hunger. If you are super hungry when you sit down to eat, you need to be mindful of that and focus especially at that point on slowing your eating so you don't way overeat. If you're ravenous, you tend to just eat and eat and eat, and you may end up eating two, three, five times as many, as much as you need. Set a timer. It's not a timer to get up. It's a timer for that 20 to 30 minutes that your body needs to register. So don't get a second helping until after that timer goes off. Set that timer. Give your body a chance to register the food that's been ingested. And then when the timer gets goes off, you get up, you turn off the timer, and then you can evaluate, mindfully evaluate, am I still hungry? And take smaller bites. As Americans, we don't chew our food very well, and we tend to take these huge bites. See, you can kind of make it a game if you want to see how small of a bite you can take and still get all of the flavors. Or by taking smaller bites, you may get different flavors when you're eating. Think about if you're eating a sub. You may have banana peppers in parts of it, but not all of it. So notice with each bite. What things am I tasting here? Kind of like when you listen to a symphony, the oboe is not always going to be playing, but you're noticing when the piccolo's playing, when the oboe's playing, when the bass is playing, smaller bites. Control your hunger. Try to create as relaxing of an environment as possible. And set a timer so you don't go back for seconds until your body's had a chance to register. Comfort eating is another mindless eating behavior. Sometimes we eat when we're sad or we're stressed, and we choose foods that are high sugar, high fat, because it can cause neurotransmitter release, such as dopamine and serotonin that help us feel better. And sometimes we gravitate towards foods that bring back happy memories, like brownies or chocolate chip cookies or whatever it is for you. Ice cream is another big one. When you notice you want to eat, especially if you want to eat a comfort food. If you're mindful, then you can journal about what's going on, what you want to eat, what you're feeling. After you finish journaling about whatever it is that's causing you stress or distress, then reevaluate. Do I still want to eat or was I just trying to eat in order to numb that distress? Some of us were raised on the clean plate club where you ate everything on your plate. That's just the way it was. You didn't leave things behind. And that can be harmful for mindful eating because a lot of times we take way more food than we actually need. Your stomach, when it's not stretched out, is about the size of your fist. Next time you take food to eat, look at your plate and then look at your fist and then look at your plate again. There's generally a big difference. Choose a smaller plate. A lot of times a salad plate is a really good choice because it's a medium sized plate and you can fill it up just as much as you do a dinner plate, but you're getting a lot less food. When you're finished eating, if you're still hungry, you can go back. Another dietitian friend of mine said, use a smaller plate, put everything that you want on it and then put half back. And then when you're finished, if you're still hungry, you can go back and get seconds. But a lot of times we take twice as much as we actually need. So if you put half back, then you're leaving yourself an opening that you can go back and get seconds, but you're not overfilling your plate and feeling like you've got to finish it in order to clean the plate. Going to a buffet can be very challenging for mindless eating because a lot of people want to get their money's worth from a buffet, so they will intentionally overeat. If you're going to a buffet, if you know you're going to have a huge meal, be mindful throughout the rest of the day of how much you're eating. That's not something that happens a lot unless you're in college. Some colleges have gone to a buffet style meal plan where you go in, you pay a certain amount of money and it's all you can eat. So you know that can be a little bit more challenging because that Might be the only meal you're getting that day. Cooking too much, though, can also be problematic. And I'm guilty of that. When I cook, I cook for a small army and there's always leftovers. If you're the type who has difficulty packaging up the leftovers and putting them in the fridge without grazing on them, then that can cause weight gain. That can cause unnecessary eating. One thing you can do if you decide that you're going to cook ahead, which I do recommend from a time management perspective, as soon as it's cooked, portion it out. You know, as you're making the plates for everybody to eat. Also have the containers to portion it out for your lunches or whatever for the rest of the week. That way, when dinner's over, you're not going back and looking at this big pot of stuff going, oh, that still looks good. It's already packaged and put back in the refrigerator. Grazing is another habit that a lot of us have. And grazing is when you're cooking and you are just eating, or when there's food, especially food on the counter, and you just go by and it's like, oh, that looks good. And you grab an apple or you grab a banana or you grab a cookie and each time you walk through the kitchen, and that can also contribute to unnecessary calories, unnecessary weight gain. If you can chew gum, Chewing gum while you are cooking can prevent grazing while you're cooking, as can talking on the phone. Now, if you're talking to a person, it's not as discouraging, but if you're talking to somebody on the phone, you don't want to be talking and chewing in their ear. So that can be another way to prevent mindless eating while you're cooking. Some people tend to have a habit of hand to mouth. And if you wear gloves while you are cooking, that can also reduce the amount of hand to mouth you're doing because you don't want to get your gloves dirty. And when I'm talking about gloves, I wear compression gloves for my arthritis. So a lot of times I'll wear those while I'm cooking. And I'm a lot more aware of where my hands are going and what my hands are doing. Some people will suck on hard candy. Now, if you do this too often, that's going to be another source of empty calories. But occasionally that can be helpful. And getting adequate sleep can also be helpful. When your circadian rhythms are disrupted, it disrupts the your body's rhythm of secreting ghrelin and leptin. Those Are your hunger and satiation hormones. When your circadian rhythms are set, you'll find and maintain. You'll find that you get hungry about the same time each day. Now, you can change that some if you need to change when your eating schedule, but you'll find that your body gets hungry based in part on those circadian rhythms. They've also found that people who are sleep deprived tend to engage in a lot more grazing and mindless eating when they're sleepy. They're not sure if they're sleepy or they're hungry. They have a difficult time differentiating the two, so they tend to gravitate towards eating. And final tip for grazing is don't keep food on the counter. Or if you do keep it, something locale like prepared vegetables, broccoli, celery, carrots, etc. But they've done studies and they found that people who kept food out, even boxes of cereal on top of the refrigerator tended to eat 20% more than people who had food completely put away in the fridge and the cabinets. Craving. Eating is another source of mindless eating. If you get this craving and you're like, oh, I really, I really want to have that to eat. Explore whether you might be craving because you've got a deficiency. This is why keeping a food diary can be really, really important. Now, if you've got an eating disorder, you definitely want to clear this with your therapist or your physician ahead of time. But I'm not talking about meticulously maintaining calories. I'm talking about keeping a log of what you're eating so then you can look at the nutrient profile and see maybe you're not getting enough zinc or enough iron or enough B12 or water. For me, when I'm dehydrated, I will absolutely crave iceberg lettuce. I will crave salad. And it's not because I'm hungry, it's because I'm dehydrated. And drinking water makes that craving go away. Without the calories. Some people will crave red meat or lentils or beans if they are deficient in iron. There's a variety of different things that our cravings may mean. So by keeping a food diary, you're going to get a better idea of why you might be hungry and ways to address that so you're not having those cravings. Another craving. Eating is what I call from compulsions. And I've shared with you guys in other videos when I was pregnant, well, and even some today, but definitely when I was pregnant, I'd be watching TV in the evening. And these commercials would come on for pizza or fried this or fried that. And I'd be looking at it going, oh, that's good, I need to have that right now. Did I need it? No, I didn't. But that's what the people wanted me to tell myself. That's the whole purpose of the commercial, is to motivate people to make it look so good, to prompt people to actually get up and get dressed and go get it, unhook from it. I'm having the thought that I need to have that right now. Now I don't need to have it right now. I may not need to have it ever. But okay, it looks really good. I want it right now. I can have it for lunch tomorrow. Maybe that's what I'll get for lunch tomorrow. But that's unhooking from it. So I'm not sitting there telling myself I need to have that. And developing distress tolerance skills. Recognizing that cravings and urges usually crest and in about 15 minutes and if you're not paying attention to them, they'll typically go away. So distracting yourself, using different distress tolerance skills so you're not just sitting there thinking about whatever it is, the pizza or the popcorn or the whatever Other tips Practice deep breathing. Deep breathing can trigger the rest and digest. It can trigger the relaxation response. Positive self talk can also be helpful before starting to eat. If you start eating and you're stressed out, you're going to eat more mindlessly, you're probably going to eat more quickly and it's going to contribute to some of the other problems we've been talking about. So that deep breathing gets you in a framework where you can be grounded and mindful of what you're eating. Engaging in positive self talk, telling yourself, all right, I am going to enjoy this meal and I'm going to feel full afterwards. And mindful awareness can also be helpful. Checking in with yourself and going, okay, am I hungry? Am I dehydrated? Am I craving something? In order to figure out how to best meet those needs, brush your teeth after dinner. Especially the mint flavored toothpastes can help suppress your appetite after you brush your teeth. There's something about that mint flavor that turns off people's desire to eat or reduces it quite a bit. Guided imagery can also be helpful. Seeing yourself putting food away, envisioning yourself picking up your plate and putting any leftovers in a container and putting it in the refrigerator and being okay with that can also be helpful. It's important for a lot of People to reconceptualize their relationship with food. It's not antagonistic, but it's also important to nurture it, savor it, enjoy it while you've got it in front of you instead of gulping it down and then being regretful that you didn't taste it and going, well, now I want to taste it again, I want more. So starting out mindfully savoring it can help you manage your circadian rhythms. Don't drink alcohol with or before your meal. They found that alcohol is actually an appetite stimulant. Who knew? Additionally, alcohol is a disinhibitor. This we knew alcohol. When people are intoxicated, even below the legal limit, it reduces your inhibitions. You tend to eat more, you tend to do things that you wouldn't normally do, you have less self control, so to speak. And they found for both of those reasons that that drinking alcohol before or with meals can significantly increase caloric intake. And explore new recipes and foods. You don't know what you don't like until you've tried it and then tried it again. I hated asparagus when I was younger, but when I started growing my own asparagus and cooking it as soon as it's picked from the field and cooking it just enough to get it warmed all the way through, I really like that. The longer asparagus, the longer it's been since asparagus has been harvested, the more bitter it starts to taste. And you know, obviously I don't like the bitter taste, but there are different ways to prepare foods, different ways to explore things that may also help you savor and enjoy your foods more when you're eating them instead of constantly searching for something that is going to hit the spot. If you must eat high glycemic index foods, those are sugars and highly refined carbohydrates. Eat them in moderation with fiber, fat or protein to reduce the sugar rush and crash. When we have a sugar rush and then we crash, the natural response is to try to get our sugar back up again, which is going to lead to increased caloric intake just to stabilize our blood sugar levels. That doesn't mean you can't eat high GI foods if you're able. Obviously if you have diabetes, you need to be really careful. But if you eat high GI foods, like white bread with fiber or protein, like some kind of meat, it will slow down the absorption of those sugars so you don't have the spike quite as strong and it moderates your blood sugar a little bit. If you have difficulty not eating the whole bag. Get fun sizes or pre portioned after Halloween when candy goes on special, you know, two, three days after Halloween, two, three days after Valentine's Day. A lot of times you can find the Fun sizes on sale so you can get the little Fun size Snicker bars or the little fun sized packages of M M's. So it gives you enough to enjoy the taste of whatever it is. It gives gives you enough to enjoy that particular food, but you're not committing as much of your caloric allotment to that food. If you have difficulty not overeating particular foods, and this can even apply to fun sizes, you may need to only eat it when you're out. So if ice cream, for example, is something you have difficulty not going back for seconds and thirds or just eating out of the tub, only eat ice cream when you go out at first you can still have it, but it may not be something that is best to have around the house at 2 in the morning until you have more mindful eating skills mastered. If you're very hungry or craving but you know you're eating enough calories, you know you're eating enough, explore nutrient deficiencies. Go back to that food food diary. Explore your hydration. You will crave. Sometimes people crave salt, sometimes they crave sugar, and sometimes they crave lettuce or other foods when they are dehydrated. So really look at your hydration status because a lot of Americans are dehydrated and not to, you know, cause panic. But if you're finding, especially if the intense hunger came on really suddenly, explore health issues. Get a physical. It could be that you've got hyper or hypothyroid. If your thyroid's out of whack, it's going to alter your your food intake and your cravings. You also may have early onset type 2 diabetes. Doesn't mean it can't be addressed with nutrition and exercise and things like that. But it's good to know the earlier you intervene, the better your outcome is going to be. And it could be caused by gut inflammation. When your gut is inflamed, if you're having a colitis inflammation, or if you've just got, you know, your guts inflamed for some other reason, you're probably not absorbing nutrients as well. And it's going to be important to identify why your gut is inflamed and get that under control. So your gut can break down the foods to make the hormones and neurotransmitters and everything else it needs we need food to survive In American culture, food has also become associated with love, belonging, care and activities. You know when you fall down and skin your knee, sometimes your caregiver may have given you a cookie or a lollipop or something, or juice. It can be associated with belonging. You bring food to people's houses when you visit, or you give them chocolate or food as a gift. And it's associated with certain activities like get togethers and holiday get togethers. For example, there's almost always food involved. Identify your mindless food habits and start changing one or two per month. And I have this bold italicized underlined. If you try to change too many at once, it's going to set you up for failure. Do one or two correctly. Change one or two this month, one or two next month. Before you know it, you're going to be through the entire list. If you need help learning how to eat healthfully, you can consult dietaryguidelines.gov your physician, or a registered dietitian.