MINDFUL EATING

Why you must think before you chew

Set the table, gather around and share the moment with your friends and family.

'If you eat in front of the TV or behind your laptop, you're going to be oblivious. You're just stuffing food down your throat, basically.'

Afast-growing body of research suggests that a slower, more thoughtful way of eating could help with weight issues. Mindful eating is based on the Buddhist concept of mindfulness: the process of bringing your mind to experience the present, usually done through meditation and other practices. Now, no one is suggesting that you meditate at each meal; mindful eating is merely about paying attention to the food you’re eating while you’re eating it – noticing the colours and smells, experiencing the textures and savouring the flavours of what you put in your mouth. And when you’re eating low-carb, that’s a lot. ‘When you eat, put all of your attention on the food, without judgement,’ says

Klasie Wessels, a personal development logotherapist and mindfulness guide. ‘If you eat in front of the TV or behind your laptop, you’re going to be oblivious. You’re just stuffing food down your throat, basically.’

Research conducted by the Eat Smart, Move More, Weigh Less program at North Carolina State University showed a beneficial link between paying attention to hunger and fullness cues through mindfulness and weight loss. In 2016, 80 people participated in a study in which half designed their own diet and the other half engaged in daily meditation. Participants took a class from a live instructor at the same time each week – either on a computer or mobile device. Researchers then measured their level of mindfulness by getting each participant to fill out the Mindful Eating Questionnaire – a 28-point survey that assessed five domains of mindful eating, including paying attention to fullness cues, planning meals and snacks, eating as a singular activity as opposed to eating while

'I have clients who eat well but they're not digesting enough nutrients. We realised that the reason behind it was because they were eating on the run.'

doing other activities and paying special attention to how food tastes. The trial lasted 15 weeks and the results revealed that the mindful group lost an average of 1.9kg – seven times more than the other group’s average weight loss of 0.2kg.

According to the Harvard Medical School Special Health Report, digestion involves a complex series of hormonal signals between the gut and the nervous system. It seems to take about 20 minutes for the brain to register fullness, which is where that often-quoted figure comes from. The danger is obviously that when you eat too quickly, you may feel full only after you’ve already overeaten, instead of putting a stop to it before you reach that point. On top of that, eating while you’re distracted by activities such as driving or watching TV may also slow down or stop digestion, which means you could even be missing out on the full nutritional benefits of your food.

Dr Daphne Lyell, a homeopath and integrative GP at White Lotus Wellness Centre in Cape Town explains that simply eating well is not enough. ‘I have clients who eat well but they’re not digesting properly, so they cannot absorb the nutrients. We realised the reason was that they were eating on the run,’ she says.

‘We are living in a “fight, flight or freeze” society. Imagine running away from a lion – your instinct is survival. You don’t run away eating a sandwich. Similarly, when really stressed, you don’t feel hungry. The blood is shunted away from the digestive tract to the organs needed for survival – the muscles, heart, lungs and brain. This is the sympathetic nervous system. The body does not know the difference between the two stressors; it responds in the same way. The balancing system is called the parasympathetic nervous system, or the ‘rest, digest and heal’ system. This system is dominant when you feel rested, make love, get a hug– basically a state in which you feel relaxed and the blood flows to the digestive tract. In this state our immune system is most efficient and we can digest and absorb nutrients properly,’ Daphne adds.

‘So when the balance between the two systems is more towards the sympathetic state, it compromises our immune function. Mindfulness helps to activate your parasympathetic system. Be still enough to hear your body whisper, then it doesn’t need to shout.’

Research conducted at Wageningen University in the Netherlands indicated that while mindful eaters do not

necessarily weigh less than their less mindful peers, they experience fewer weight fluctuations. ‘Mindfulness helps to build self-awareness, and long-term, it increases self-regulation while reducing self-judgement – behaviours that are associated with better chances of success on weight loss programs,’ says Louise Clamp a dietician at Shelly Meltzer & Associates, in Cape Town.

So mindfulness also helps with resisting the pleasures of the table?

‘It essentially supports more intuitive eating; a tuning in to the present experience – not just of hunger and satiety but also recognising thoughts, physical sensations and emotional tones that may be present and precipitating the eating behaviour,’ says Louise.

Next time you crave a large slice of cheesecake, think about how it would taste in your mouth and what effect it could have on your body – that could be enough to slam on the brakes!

At this point you’re most likely thinking that ‘mindful eating’ is going to be a big lifestyle change. But there are shortcuts available to ease you into it. Klasie suggests eating with your non-dominant hand or eating silently for a short period of time, to think about how the food got from the farm to your table. Then the trick is to ‘put the food in your mouth, taste it, listen to the sound it makes in your mouth … Just engage all of your five senses – that is mindful eating 101. You’re going to eat more responsibly; you’re going to be more controlled,’ he says.

'Be still enough to hear your body whisper, then it doesn't need to shout.'