NPR⁠^84%

Wolfing down your meals? Here's how to slow down and eat more mindfully ^⁠79%

9/11/2023, 7:03:00 AM

BS Summary: This article contains 27 faulty reasoning types, including Post Hoc (False Cause), Overconfidence Bias, and Appeal to Authority, with Indoctrination as the most egregious example at 37% saturation with 238 hits. Analysis detected 1,261 faulty-reasoning hits from 643 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 69.9% and a BS Rank of ⁠79% (4,791 of 21,887 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 78.10% of the article peer group.

Confidence50%

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643 words

You ever eat so fast that you get hiccups from just like inhaling the meal?

Or you bite your cheek or tongue because you mistook it for food?

Yeah, I've done it.

So how do we slow down and eat more deliberately?

And what are some techniques we can use to eat at a healthy pace?

Lilian Cheung, lecturer and director of Mindfulness Research and Practice in the Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H.

Chan School of Public Health, shares helpful tips on how to eat more mindfully.

That's when you use your senses to enjoy the food, notice how it makes you feel and take time to express gratitude for your meal.

This practice "encourages us to make choices that are satisfying and nourishing to the body.

And as we become more aware of our eating habits, we can take steps towards behavior that will benefit not only ourselves, but also our environment," she says.

Benefits of mindful eating

Research has shown that mindful eating has had positive impacts on certain populations.

One study from 2022 found that incorporating mindful eating into a weight-loss program helped reduce stress, anxiety and depression among adults with obesity.

Another study from 2019 found that mindfulness eating training improved psychological well-being in pregnant women — and its effects appeared to be maintained 8 years later.

So how do you eat more mindfully?

Cheung shares 6 tips.

Use mealtime as a moment for reflection

Cheung shares an invocation she learned from the late Buddhist monk Thích Nhất Hanh called "The Five Contemplations," outlined in his book Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life.

She says that reciting these lines before meals have helped her practice mindful eating.

Take at least 20 minutes to finish your meal

Very often we find ourselves eating while doing something else, says Cheung — and that can make us eat faster than we normally would.

When you sit down to eat, spend about 20 minutes doing so.

"It takes about that time for your body to get the signal to the brain that you are full," she adds.

Put that phone away

Remove all distractions while you eat.

They can interfere with your ability to enjoy your food and notice when you are full.

"Allocate time to eat and only eat," says Cheung.

"Make sure your cell phone is face down and you're not going to be responding to any messages that come through."

Notice all the little details about your food

You might wonder how to spend 20 whole minutes eating a sandwich.

Cheung says one way to slow down is to engage your senses and think through all the details about your meal.

"Ask yourself: what's on my plate?

How hungry am I today?

Is it too salty?"

she says.

Notice the smell, the texture and whatever other senses that arise as you eat.

Portion out food you might munch on mindlessly

Cheung suggests putting a small amount of snack food, like potato chips, in a separate bowl to help avoid mindless munching.

"If you have a whole bag of chips, it is really challenging to stop after six or eight chips," she says.

"We love the taste, we love the crispiness and we just keep getting it from the bag, especially when we're looking at our cell phone or watching a TV program and are distracted."

Portioning out these foods can help you eat less at a healthier pace.

Actually chew

If you're inhaling your food you're probably not chewing it.

And chewing is an important part of digestion, says Cheung.

It helps "break up the foods so it's easier for absorption."

Look at each bite before popping it into your mouth, acknowledge what you're eating and "chew, chew, chew," she adds.

643 words analyzed.

Speakers

1speaker30%attributed speech448writer words

195 attributed words100% of attributed speech99% writer coverage

Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.

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Wolfing down your meals? Here's how to slow down and eat more mindfully ^⁠79%

Speakers

Lilian Cheung

Analysis

Biases

Fallacies

Manipulations

Wolfing down your meals? Here's how to slow down and eat more mindfully ⁠79%

Speakers

Lilian Cheung

Analysis

Biases

Fallacies

Manipulations

Wolfing down your meals? Here's how to slow down and eat more mindfully ^⁠79%