Eating on autopilot? This could help you take back control

Paying closer attention to hunger, fullness and how food makes us feel could help us make different choices – without turning eating into another set of rules.

When eating becomes habitual, it’s easy to lose touch with some of the signals that tell us when we’re hungry and when we’ve had enough.

We might eat while working, pick at leftovers, have a snack because everyone else is eating, or automatically reach for something with our afternoon coffee. None of these things is necessarily a problem. But when eating becomes almost automatic, it can become harder to notice what our body is actually telling us.

Mindful eating offers one way to pay attention again.

Psychologist Cynthia Pezzolesi suggests beginning with hunger.

1. Reconnect with hunger

“Many of us have fallen into unhelpful patterns of grazing all day, eating leftovers from the children’s plates, or doing a 4pm coffee run and grabbing cake whilst we’re at it,” she says.

“We have forgotten what proper hunger feels like. If you’re not hungry when you start eating, it’s difficult to know when you’re full.”

Rather than trying to control every mouthful, the idea is to become more familiar with your body’s signals.

“You need to notice when hunger disappears and what fullness feels like,” says Pezzolesi. “Mindfulness helps you reconnect with the natural mechanisms that we tend to ignore when we are trying to control our food intake.”

This doesn’t mean you have to become rigid about when you eat. Instead, you could experiment with noticing the difference between physical hunger and the urge to eat out of habit.

Before reaching for something, pause for a moment and ask: Am I hungry?

You may be. You may not. Either answer is useful information.

2. Notice how food makes you feel

Mindful eating isn’t just about hunger. It’s also about paying attention to the experience of eating and what happens afterwards.

The next time you eat something particularly enjoyable, notice how it tastes and how you feel as you eat it.

Pezzolesi suggests asking: “Do I feel good after eating this item, or is what you’re experiencing what I call the taste of disappointment?”

Sometimes we know, even while we’re eating, that we’ve gone beyond what feels satisfying.

“You just know, even as you are eating, that you’re going to feel bad afterwards, perhaps even guilty,” she says.

There is a difference, she suggests, between something tasting delicious and reaching a point where you’ve eaten more than feels comfortable.

The distinction is useful because it moves the focus away from whether a food is “good” or “bad”.

Instead, you’re asking a more personal question: How does this actually make me feel?

3. Give eating your full attention

The final step is perhaps the simplest – and one of the hardest. Eat without doing something else at the same time.

Put your phone down. Turn off the television. Give yourself a chance to notice what you’re eating.

“The practice of mindful eating embraces the idea that you can eat anything you want when you want, as long as you are connected with the experience,” says Pezzolesi.

“That means putting away your phone, turning off the TV, and staying present with how the meal is affecting all five of your senses.”

This isn’t about making every meal into a meditation. It’s simply about noticing.

What does the food taste like? What is its texture? Does it still taste as good after the first few mouthfuls? How does your body feel as you continue eating? Afterwards, consider how you feel.

You might decide next time to eat a smaller piece of cake because you know that more won’t make you feel good. Or you might make exactly the same choice again.

Either way, you’ve made a decision based on experience rather than simply following a rule.

“You might be encouraged to make a different choice next time,” says Pezzolesi, “or you might eat the same way the following day.

“It’s the difference between restriction and choice,” she says.

Mindful eating isn’t about eating perfectly or eliminating foods you enjoy. It’s about becoming more aware of hunger, satisfaction and pleasure – and allowing that information to guide you.

In a culture increasingly preoccupied with controlling appetite, that can be a surprisingly radical idea: rather than trying to silence your body’s signals, start paying attention to them.

Words: Lucy Rawlinson, Images: Shutterstock