Eat Right: Mindless Eating
Have you ever eaten a whole bag of junk food when you are not even hungry? Do you often find yourself munching on food even though you are not really hungry? If so, count yourself among the millions who are victims of mindless eating.
Mindless eating is when we eat without thinking about what we are doing. This is different from emotionally eating - we eat to change the way we feel.
In Singapore, we have truly reached a point where we do not eat to live but we live to eat. This odd eating habit can be best described as mindless eating. One of the common repercussions of mindless eating is weight gain.
If you find yourself prey to such eating habits, these are a few tips to help you overcome it:
- Clean out your plate. - We have a higher tendency to finish the food on our plates. It could stem from parent’s teaching since young or, we just simply love finishing things. This is why it is so hard to leave things on our plates; we finish the last bite even though we are really full. We are taught or pressured to be “done eating” when our plates are clean. So my suggestion would be try leaving a piece of food on your plate. Or, start with less food since we cannot eat what is not on our plate.
- Make eating harder. - Experts say it takes 20 minutes to digest and realise the effects of the food you ate. Hence, you keep eating when you are no longer even hungry. To combat that, try to make it harder to eat. How? Use chopstick and eat with your non-dominant hand. Also, try pacing yourself with the slowest eater at the table. Put your utensils down after every bite. And try starting last and finishing last.
- Distractions - If you eat while working or watching TV, or do anything in addition to eating, you are going to eat more. Solution? Pretend you are a food critic. Taste your food and have to write a review of the taste, texture and smell.
- The healthy “resturants” - Watch out for healthy restaurants such as Subway or any other “healthy” eateries. Most people, like me, because they think they are eating healthy, will get a soda, cookie and chips and the most unhealthy sandwiches (*cough egg mayo, tuna mayo). The calories will add up and before you know it, your “healthy” meal is not so healthy after all.
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