Eat Mindfully and Never Diet Again?

Some of you may have experienced what I found myself doing just the other night: I plunked down in front of my computer with a bag of potato chips to eat while reading email. Twenty minutes later I reached for another chip and… they were all gone. Where did they go? I didn’t remember eating it that much. In fact, I couldn’t have because I was still hungry

I hate to admit it, but that very same thing happens to me far more often than I’d like. Does it sound familiar to you, too?

The solution, according to one woman, doesn’t involve taking diet pills. It doesn’t even involve dieting at all. Instead, we need to put our brains to work to lose weight. That is: we need to eat “mindfully”, as Harvard Medical School instructor Jean Fain explains in her YouTube video, “Why a Twinkie?”.

Now, ordinarily there’s not much exciting about watching a grown woman eating a Twinkie while emoting happiness and pleasure, and between the shoddy video quality and Fain’s patronizing over-enunciation I felt like I was back in 8th grade trying not to snicker at a health class video.

But I kept watching, contemptuously, in part to find out just how long she was going to sit there silently eating that Twinkie. A full minute later, and only halfway through the Twinkie, she stopped. Did you get that? She didn’t even finish the thing. In my household that’s almost unheard of. Fain’s point, however, was that we can eat the foods we love and still lose weight if we’ll just eat mindfully.

So what’s mindful eating? Susan Albers’ book, Eating Mindfully: How to End Mindless Eating and Enjoy a Balanced Relationship with Food , describes it as consciously savoring your food:

…feeling the saltiness of each potato chip on your fingers when you pick it up. The taste of salt when you put the chip on your tongue. It’s listening to the loud crunch of each bite, and the noise that chewing makes in your head….”

Their other tips: make a celebration of it: if you’re going to eat, do nothing but eat. Eat slowly, free from mental distractions like the TV or computer. Wash your hands first like Mom told you to do. Sit down. Take small bites. Chew slowly. Give yourself permission to satisfy your hunger or cravings and to enjoy the taste while you do so.

Then eat every bite like it’s your first taste of that food… and might be your last.

You know, I think I may just give this a try. How about you?