We are living in the rush.
We are less and less time for basic activities, such as sleep, relax or even eating food. Just think when was the last time you had enough time to cook meal from scratch, sit down with your relatives or friends and have a decent meal? The reality is that we tend to consume more pre-packaged or ready to eat meals, mostly in front of our desk, or while trying to juggle between checking news and chatting up with emails.
Let’s be honest – we cannot focus on few things in the time, and concept of multi-tasking for improving work efficiency was overthrown.
When it comes to eating and doing something else, we can either focus on the email content or on eating and recognizing signals from our body, for example ‘I am full. Stop eating’.
Because our attention is drawn into writing message, we often miss that signal. Distracting yourself during meals can bring fatal results, including over-eating, which long-term might cause weight gain and obesity (Wansink and Chandon, 2014).
Concept of Mindful Eating
The word Mindfulness means awareness. How does it refer to eating? Briefly concept of Mindful eating, introduces idea of bringing awareness into meal consumption. In other words, being able to not only put foods into mouth to meet body demand, but be conscious of their taste, smell and structure. And most importantly, recognizing moment of being satisfied with the meal, but not full to the maximum.
Why mindful eating should matter to you?
Eating in rush or while multi-tasking increases stress, what in turn affect digestion and metabolism. Might even contribute to bloating and constipation (Hunt et al., 2014). Increasing levels of stress in everyday life, affects our mood and might contribute to anxiety and depression. Interestingly, more stressed we are, we tend to choose unhealthy, junk foods, which are often high in sugar, salt and fat (Shepherd and Raats, 2006). Therefore, they affect our mood as well, so we fall into trap. We feel worse and we crave more comfort foods, to boost reward system, just the moment.
We can be surprised how quickly we can become addicted from sugar and fat.
In order to prevent falling into sugar/fat trap we should be able to recognize when and why we are eating. And that’s bring idea of food journaling to life.
Food journaling
We are all living busy lifes. Not suprinsgly, that we struggle to keep track what is happening. In order to restore track on our busy living, and especially diet choices, employing food journaling seems to be good idea for following food habits.
Keeping food journal was mostly used by people, who want to lose weight to track calories from foods. Now, it is recommended to everyone who, want to life healthy and mindful lifestyle. The main aim of keeping food journal is to think about our everyday habits in terms of eating. It prompts us to answer questions, such as what/when/why and how we are eating.
Why you should keep food journal?
If your health and wellbeing matters to you – get yourself food dairy. Nowadays, there many mobile apps available that can help you keep food log on your phone. log your food on your phone. Those apps can also calculate calorie form the food portion, and give you information, what macro/micronutrients are you getting as well. Actually, people who are on a diet or want to start healthy lifestyle, they do not consider how many calories of processed foods they have – they are too much focused on the total calorie intake. If they would eat real foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains and quality meat; they will be eating less calories than a diet full of processed foods (Prada et al., 2017). Therefore, knowing what, when how and why we are eating, might help us recognize eating patterns and recognize any unhealthy choices or already established routines. Because habits are a large part of who we are and can determine whether or not we are accomplish desired goal, it is important to know which of them are good for us and change the bad ones (Funget al., 2016). Food journaling seems to be a powerful tool to track those habits and being aware what is happening in our diet. It can help you realize if you are eating out of boredom rather than hunger.
Before you start Before you start your new journey with food journaling, some tips to take into account. First of all, you need to decide how you will track your eating habits – you can use mobile apps, as well as you write them down on paper.
When you decide about technicality, make sure that you track all important information. They might differ, depending on your goal.
Some tips, what to include in food journal, especially in the beginning:
- Time of the meal or part of the day.
- How do you feel before meal? Are you hungry (you can rate your hunger on scale from 1 to 5, being the most hungry)?
- Record the meal (What was in it? What was the portion(s)?)
- How to you feel after eating meal?
Are you ready to start your journey with food journaling? Keeping a food dairy can help you to remember what you have eaten during the day, and also quantities. Remember - too much even good thing might be harmful!
It is also a good way to monitor your calories, and track them, in order to know which nutrient (protein, carbs or fats) contribute to your caloric intake the most. Especially, if you want to start incorporating healthy eating, or eliminate junk foods from your diet, tracking what you are eating might be extremely helpful.
Some resources, which help you start: Fung T, Long MW, Hung P, Cheung MW, Lilian WY. An Expanded Model for Mindful Eating for Health Promotion and Sustainability: Issues and Challenges for Dietetics Practice. J Acad Nutr Diet. 2016;116:1081-1086.
Prada M, Garrido MV, Rodrigues D. Lost in processing? Perceived healthfulness, taste and caloric content of whole and processed organic food. Appetite. 2017;114:175-186.
Hunt R, Quigley E, Abbas Z, Eliakim A, Emmanuel A, Goh K-L, Guarner F, Katelaris P, Smout A, Umar M, Whorwell P, Johanson J, Saenz R, Besançon L, Ndjeuda E, Horn J, Hungin P, Jones R, Krabshuis J, LeMair A, World Gastroenterology Organisation. Coping with common gastrointestinal symptoms in the community: a global perspective on heartburn, constipation, bloating, and abdominal pain/discomfort May 2013. J Clin Gastroenterol. 2013,48(7);567-578.
Shepherd R, Raats M. The Psychology of Food Choice. Science, 2006.
Wansink B, Chandon P. Slim by design: Redirecting the accidental drivers of mindless overeating. Journal of Consumer Psychology. 2014, 24(3);413-431.
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