 Welcome to Happiness Isn't Brain Surgery with Doc Snipes. This podcast was created to provide you the information and tools Doc Snipes gives her clients so that you too can start living happier. Our website, docsknipes.com, has even more resources, videos and handouts and even interactive sessions with Doc Snipes to help you apply what you learn. Go to docsknipes.com to learn more. Hey there everybody and welcome to Happiness Isn't Brain Surgery with Doc Snipes. Today we're going to be talking about mindful eating. We're getting ready to go into that summer season where everybody's interested in putting on their bathing suits and going to the pool so people start dieting and dieting is one of those things that you know unfortunately you do it and you know a lot of us do it but generally dieting is not a eating pattern that you're willing to maintain for life. Mindful eating will help you become more aware of what your body needs and when your body needs it so you're not eating mindlessly and taking in unnecessary calories. Most people find when they start eating mindfully their weight starts to regulate and get down to where they're comfortable. So these are things that we want to look at and am I saying it's easy? No. You know mindful eating takes work. It takes practice to eat only when you're hungry and pay attention to what your body's telling you but it can reap some wonderful rewards. So we're going to start out talking about what mindfulness is, what mindful eating is and why it's important and then we're going to delve into a couple techniques that you can use to start eating more mindfully. Mindfulness is the practice of being present in the current moment. That means not worrying about the project you've got to do next week or something that you said to a colleague yesterday or you're not tying up your energy in past regrets or future worries. You're in the present moment aware of what's going on around you. Is there a butterfly? Is there a wasp? Is it hot? Is it cold? Are people being noisy? What is going on in your present moment? Really spending just a minute or two and checking in with all your senses. What am I hearing, seeing, smelling, feeling, tasting and that can really get you into the present moment so you can focus. Mindfulness helps you be in tune with what you need to improve the next moment or continue on a positive path. Sometimes you check in with yourself and you're like, yeah, things are doing pretty good. I'm just going to keep going as I'm going. Other times you'll check in with yourself and you'll say, you know what, you know, I'm realizing that I'm really stressed out right now or I'm really tired. So it is what it is. What can I do to improve the next moment so I don't stay stuck here? Mindfulness requires radical acceptance. That is accepting life is as it is instead of fighting with it and saying I shouldn't be angry or I shouldn't be stressed or I should feel a certain way. You feel how you feel and that feeling is your body's alarm system or alert system telling you if it's happy, you know, do that again. If it's angry or scared, that means there may be a threat, you know, there may be something that needs to be addressed doesn't mean there is, you know, a lot of times it's like the when the alarm, um, fire alarm goes off and it, there's really no problem. You know, it can be a false alarm and when you're depressed, it's often your body's way of telling you, you feel powerless over something. Mindfulness requires you to just accept your emotions as they are. If you're angry, okay, instead of fighting with it and whatever, figure out what you're angry about and how you're going to deal with it. Instead of trying to make yourself less angry, you know, fighting with that emotion isn't going to do any good. You need to figure out what's at the root of it and address that mindfulness means focusing on the things in the present moment that you have control over, you know, looking around, if you're in a cafeteria with a hundred people and it's noisy, you probably don't have control over that. What do you have control over? You can take your tray or your food and go outside and sit and eat if you want to be somewhere more quiet, if it's too stressful to be in around all that noise. So you want to focus on the things that you have control over and recognize that you don't have to be stuck in a certain feeling. If you're feeling angry, okay, you know, something happened yesterday and it really perturbed me and, you know, I kind of dwelled on it for half a second and I'm like, that's not going to do any good. So I chose to call a friend and start talking about something else because there was nothing I could do to address that other situation and staying angry and dwelling on it until this morning when business hours opened again, wasn't going to do any good. So recognize that you don't have to stay stuck. Now mindful eating takes that whole, all those principles and applies it to, guess what, eating. Mindful eating means focusing on the here and now and turning all your senses to your meal and your body's response. In American society, we often eat on the run. I mean, think about going to drive-throughs and ordering food and eating in your car or going to the hot dog stand with your colleague and getting a hot dog and walking back to the office and gulping it down as you go. A lot of times we're eating while we're doing other things and we're not even focusing on the eating, which means we often eat too much. It takes about 20 minutes for your body to register I'm full. Next time you go out to eat, pay attention to how much time it takes you to eat your meal. Most people, it doesn't take them more than three or four minutes to eat a hot dog, you know, maybe 10 if they're talking. So before their body actually gets the signal that, hey, I'm full. They finished that hot dog. So their body's still telling them, oh, I'm still hungry. Is that all there was? So they may go eat something else. And then those are calories they probably didn't need. If they would have waited about 20 minutes, the satiation chemicals would have probably kicked in. So it's important to slow down. We tend to have poor digestion. We tend to eat whenever we have a thought about food. I know I'll be watching TV in the evening and they'll have commercials on for various different kinds of fast food and, you know, processed foods and whatever. And I'm looking at it going, oh, that sounds really good right now. And my first thought is I want that. I need that. And then I think, you know what, that's just a thought. I don't have to have that right now because I'm really not hungry. It just looks really good. I can put that on the menu for lunch tomorrow or something. One phrase you can think of before you go into the kitchen or go to the fast food place is am I eating to live or living to eat? Now I love food. Don't get me wrong. I love food. So when I eat, I really enjoy my food. But it's not like I want to spend my entire day every day just eating. There's more to life than that. So what can we do to start becoming more mindful of our eating? So we reduce the number of unnecessary calories so we eat only until we're actually full instead of past that because we ate too fast and we improve our digestion so our body gets the nutrients that it needs. Well, the first thing is do a mindfulness scan before you eat. And I suggest this even if you're not trying to eat mindfully. Check in with yourself three times a day, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Ask yourself, how am I feeling emotionally? Am I feeling happy, content, scared, angry, stressed out? How are you feeling? And generally there's multiple different emotions there and that's okay. You just need to know what they are. Well, then you ask yourself, how am I feeling mentally? And that means am I concentrating well? Am I having difficulty problem solving? Do I have a foggy head? You know, that deals with how well and clearly you're thinking. Physically, what's going on with me? Do I feel good? Do I feel energetic? Am I dehydrated? What cravings am I having? That gives you a big clue as to what your body might need because your body tends to crave things when you are deficient in a mineral or a vitamin or something. I know when I get dehydrated, I crave salads. I crave iceberg lettuce, which is almost exclusively water. So that tells me I'm dehydrated. So paying attention to your body's cravings can help you feed your body what it needs in order to function optimally. The other thing you want to ask yourself is interpersonally, how am I feeling? And I know you're thinking, well, what does that have to do with eating? Well, a lot of times if we're feeling lonely or rejected, we may turn to food because a lot of times food represents times in our life where we've been accepted. It reminds us of happy times. It reminds us of celebrations. So a lot of times people will turn to food when they're feeling lonely as a way of self soothing, not because they're hungry, but because they feel bad. So if you're feeling that way, you really want to check in with yourself and say, am I hungry or am I lonely? And food is not going to fix lonely. It just kind of shoves it down for a few minutes. You need to do something else to address lonely. And finally, environmentally, how am I feeling? Am I feeling unsafe? You know, if you're in a big cafeteria and you don't like being around that many people, you may feel like you want to eat as fast as you can to get out of there. Or maybe you're in the cafeteria and you don't want to see a certain person that you work with, so you're trying to eat as quickly as possible so you don't make contact with them. Well, OK, you know, understanding that you're not comfortable in the situation that you're in tells you you either need to put yourself in a different situation or figure out how to deal with that to be cognizant of it because you're probably going to gulp your food. And are you feeling rushed? And that's what we do a lot of times when we're stopping by the fast food restaurant or whatever. We feel rushed. We don't feel like we should take time to eat. Eating food fuels your body. Your body makes the neurotransmitters that help you focus, learn, be happy, get good sleep, stay healthy. It makes all all those chemicals from the food you eat. But in order for it to do that, you have to not only eat the food, but digest it, which means you got to chew it. And, you know, a lot of times when we're gulping food, we're not chewing it very well. So tons of good nutrients that could have been absorbed, just go right out. Make sure you start practicing mindfulness. If you practice mindfulness before eating, and it doesn't take that long, it probably takes half the time that I've spent just talking about it to check in with yourself and say, you know, number one, am I really hungry? Do I need to eat or am I eating for some other reason? How am I feeling emotionally? If you're feeling sad and depressed, what can you do to improve the moment? The next technique is unhooking. A lot of times we say, I need to eat or I have to have that. And we may not say it out loud, but in your brain, you're going, oh, that looks really good. I need to have that right now. And in reality, you probably don't. In reality, you could probably have it for dinner. If it's two in the afternoon, you know, wait a couple of hours. Most of the time we are not so malnourished that we have to have food right now. But if you, when you have that thought, I need to eat. Change what you're saying to, I'm having the thought that I need to eat. So for me in the evening, I have a bad habit of grazing and that's very mindless eating where you're just kind of dinners over and you're still picking at stuff up until the time you go to bed. That's horrible for your metabolism. And it's a lot of empty calories because I got full at dinner. I'm just eating because I'm bored or, you know, stressed out or whatever it is. And that's not helpful. So after dinner, you know, we clean up the dinner dishes. And then when I start thinking I need to get something to eat, I need a snack. I replace that with, I'm having the thought that I need a snack. And thoughts come and go. Thoughts can come as, come in and go as quickly as they came in. So I think to myself, what could I do for 15 minutes? You know, let me distract myself. And if I'm really hungry, then my stomach's going to kind of grumble and tell me that I'm hungry. Let me see what else I can do. Another thing you could ask yourself is, you know, I'm having the thought that I need to eat. Why is that? Is it because I just saw a commercial for something that looked really good? Is it because I'm stressed? Because I'm tired and I'm trying to find something to eat to help me stay awake. Why am I wanting to eat and address that? Other things you may tell yourself is I really want and fill in the blank a pizza, a hamburger, ice cream. And we can get stuck on that thinking I really want it. Think like a kid that's getting ready for Christmas, you know, you're thinking about all the things you really want Santa to bring you and that you just roll it over in your mind. Well, if you roll it over in your mind and start thinking about what it's going to taste like and what it's going to smell like and all that kind of stuff, then yeah, you're going to continue to think about it. And that urge is going to get stronger because you're feeding it. So instead, say to yourself, I'm having the thought that I really want this and then do something else. Thoughts will pass in a few minutes if that's all it is. Often thoughts of wanting to eat are triggered by a desire for dopamine and stress relief because when we eat, our body releases serotonin and dopamine to reward us for eating. You know, our body says, good, you're fueling the body. The body doesn't really know when it's had too much a lot of times unless you start getting, you know, uncomfortably full. So that's why mindful eating is so important because it's important to know whether you're eating for emotional reasons or you're eating for physical and health reasons. Another thing that can cause us to overeat or to have persistent thoughts of wanting to eat is if we're overtired. When you're asleep and your circadian rhythms are all in balance and everything, your hunger and satiation hormones are all in balance. But when people become overtired, their hunger and satiation hormones also get out of whack. So you don't know if you're hungry or if you're full or, you know, your body's just not sending the right signals. It's out of kilter. Just like you kind of probably feel out of kilter because you're too tired. So make sure you're getting enough sleep. Make sure you're not eating for emotional reasons. And, you know, if you need to do something different, if you're eating because you're stressed out or you're sad, try doing something fun that will help release that dopamine and instead of eating. And if that does the trick, great. If that doesn't do the trick, well, then revisit this. The third technique is keeping a nutrition diary. And this is really helpful because it helps you identify patterns, different types of foods that you crave at different times of day. When you have different moods, different seasons. There are a lot of different patterns you can look at. And if there are certain foods that you crave, like I told you earlier, I crave iceberg lettuce when I'm dehydrated. You can learn a lot about what your cravings mean by keeping a nutrition diary. And yeah, it's a pain in the butt to do. But the benefits are well worth it. So your nutrition diary, you want to have the date and the time, you know, that's kind of a no brainer. You can't do patterns unless you're, you know, what you're talking about. Identify how you're feeling emotionally and physically. Now this is, you know, we're not doing the whole mindfulness scan. You're just saying, you know, am I hungry? Am I tired? Am I in pain? Am I sad? How am I feeling? Am I happy? What are you craving? Salty, sweet, sour or spicy? What flavor are you craving? Because that can also indicate whether you're dehydrated or whether you're not getting enough, um, enough of certain minerals, et cetera. Then write down what you eat and how much, you know, obviously, that's going to be important. For that entire day, make sure you log how much water you consumed throughout the day, how many ounces of caffeinated drinks you had, and that includes any sodas, any teas, any, um, let's see, soda, tea and coffee, those are your big offenders. And yes, green tea has caffeine in it unless you get decaffeinated green tea. So you want to make sure you put that in there because caffeine is a deretic, it will dehydrate you. So every, for every eight ounces of caffeinated drink you have, you have to have another eight ounces of water in order to kind of balance it out. Also identify whether or not you worked out my eating habits and my cravings are far different on days that I work out than on days that I don't. So that's important for me to know because it helps me figure out, you know, what am I really needing versus wanting? And when I work out, you know, what nutrients, what additional nutrients might my body need and how well you slept the night before. Cause remember on the last slide, I said, being overtired can keep you from knowing when you're hungry and when you're full. So in this nutrition diary, we're looking at, you know, possible reasons for eating, possible reasons underlying your cravings and generally what you're eating habits and patterns are your doctor, your nutritionist can also help you draw connections that there are certain foods that you crave a lot, especially if you just have this insatiable craving. You know, consider talking, asking your doctor about it. Is there, you know, some mineral in this that maybe I'm not getting? Do I need to take a multivitamin if you're not already taking one? These are all things that you can learn from your nutrition diary in order for your body to break down those foods and make the neurotransmitters and hormones it needs to keep your body machine running smoothly. Not only does it need protein and carbohydrates and fats and water, but it also needs all of the vitamins and minerals in order to act as catalysts and make those chemical reactions happen. So a good diet is really important if you're not eating a good diet. And I'll give you an example when I was in college. You know, I ate pizza a lot, like every night, probably for a year. The freshman year was, you know, a lot of bad eating, but that doesn't give you all of the nutrients that you need. So even though you're getting way more calories than you probably need, your body's probably still going to be craving certain foods. So you're going to be eating additional stuff on top of it because your body's going, no, I still need iron. So I'm going to make you crave red meat or I still need calcium. So I'm going to make you crave ice cream or whatever the case may be. So not only are you eating, you know, whatever you want to eat, but then your body is telling you, I also need these minerals. So you may be looking and eating additional foods that you could have worked into your diet a different way. So finally, eating mindfully, eat sitting at a table with no distractions. This is really hard for most people. That means don't be reading on your iPhone. That means don't be talking on the phone. That means don't be watching TV. And ideally when you're first learning to do this, don't be talking with somebody else. If you're engaged in a conversation, you're not going to be paying attention to what you're eating. Focus on what you're eating. What does it taste like? What's the texture like? What does it smell like? Put your fork down between bites. This is another hard one because the way we typically eat in American culture, we're kind of shoveling it in. So it feels weird to take a bite and put your fork down and chew and think about things and then pick your fork back up. Initially, you feel like you're just constantly putting your fork down and picking it back up, but this will help you slow down. If you put your fork down, you're going to focus more on what you're tasting. See how small of a bite you can take and still get all of the flavors. That's just kind of a little game I play sometimes, which goes to the next two things of trying to notice the difference in flavors between foods and identifying the spices and foods used to make the dish. So like chili, chili has a lot of different things in it. So when I eat chili, I kind of savor it and I try to identify the garlic and the onion and what other tastes and seasonings that I'm identifying, obviously the chili powder. And that helps me know number one, be more mindful, but also know more what I like because certain chilies I really like and certain chilies. I'm like, no, it's just, it's not there. So knowing what you like, but eating mindfully gives you an opportunity to focus on those things and determine what you like to eat. It slows you down. So you appreciate what you're eating while you're eating it. And you don't feel like you need to have, you know, the cereal bowl that's a mixing bowl. My son does that sometimes, you know, teenage boy, he eats like crazy. He's always hungry though, and he'll get a big old mixing bowl and fill it with cereal and put half a gallon of milk on it. And I'm just like, Oh my gosh. But he's hungry and he's eating because he's hungry because he's growing. If I did that, I would just be eating until I was over full just because it tasted good, and then I wouldn't feel good afterwards. So that's the other thing with mindful eating. It helps you avoid that overstuffed over full feeling and allows you to sample more different types of things. If you're not having this huge plate of spaghetti, which has, you know, a thousand calories in it at lunch, if you have a small plate of spaghetti, then, you know, you have more calories left over that your body still needs to try different foods, to have different things at dinner and for a snack and things like that. So you actually get a lot more variety in your meals when you start eating mindfully. Alrighty, I hope that gave you some good tips on how to start eating mindfully and approach nutrition instead of looking at it as a diet on diet off sort of thing approach nutrition as a lifestyle. And if you start eating mindfully, you'll learn what you like, you'll only eat until you're full and you'll start feeling like you have more control over your thoughts about eating. The ability to launch docsnipes.com and the happiness podcast is in large part due to the sponsorship from our sister site, all ceuse.com, providing continuing education and pre certification training to addiction and mental health counselors around the globe since 2006. If you are a mental health counselor or addictions counselor needing CEUs, or if you want to become an addictions counselor, peer specialist, recovery residence administrator or certified recovery coach, please visit all ceuse.com unlimited ceuse starting at $59 and specialty certificate tracks starting at $89. Go to all ceuse.com to learn more.