3 Strategies to Eat Mindfully Throughout the Holiday Season

The holidays offer a time for fun and fulfillment, yet they can be stressful, tiring and overwhelming at the same time. Maintaining mindful awareness throughout the season will help you remain connected to yourself, remain healthy and well while keeping any stress or emotional eating manageable and at bay.

During times of increased stress you become more likely to be in a rush and tired, which leads to making choices that are often rushed and favor convenience. This may cause an experience of not being fully present which can cause eating to feel like just one more thing on your to-do list. Rushing, not being present with your food and not choosing nourishment can cause the internal experience of stress to only become worse.

Mindful eating is paying attention to what you are eating while deriving pleasure and nourishment from your food. When you are eating mindfully, you enhance the experience of eating while acknowledging the opportunity to nourish your body and your mind. Mindful eating is paying attention to the sensory experience of your food.

Just the sight of the food you are about to eat begins the process of digestion. Mindful eating begins by taking in the visual elements and aromas of your food, before you even take one single bite! This mindful process enhances the experience of eating and pleasure of tasting your food.

The holiday season can trigger emotional and stress eating simply because of the stressed and rushed nature of the season. Additionally, this time of year more “comfort foods” tend to be always available and just about everywhere which can trigger the desire to eat irrespective of hunger. Cravings can be caused by just seeing or smelling food AND because of stress and emotional distress.

The three following strategies are intended to help maintain mindful eating throughout the holiday season in order to manage emotional and stress based cravings effectively. When you use these strategies you create an opportunity to be present with your food, to be engaged with eating in a mindful, calm and relaxed manner. This creates an opportunity to derive true pleasure and nourishment from your food, while at the same time reducing stress and emotional tension in general.

1.    Practice 1 minute of deep breathing before eating.

When you are breathing deeply and in a state of relaxation you are engaging the parasympathetic nervous system. This is the rest and digest mode, which is the mode we want to live in—unless of course there is a true emergency. Often when we are rushed or stressed during the holidays, we eat more quickly to get to the next thing on the to-do list. Try slowing down, and breathing deeply for one minute before you eat in order to calm your nervous system. This will allow your body to assimilate the nutrients from you food more effectively while also creating a sense of inner calm as you release stress and tension with your breath.

2.    Before you eat, set an intention to eat mindfully.

When you set any intention, you set in motion a powerful force that helps you focus. When you set your intention to eat mindfully before you take your first bite, you will be far more likely to do so. Setting an intention helps you create a sense of ritual and care for the process of eating and the nourishment and pleasure you will derive from your food. Try setting an intention to eat mindfully before you eat and notice how this simple practice can shift your awareness and sense of focus from your to-do list to the present moment.

3.    Practice gratitude before you eat.

After a bit of deep breathing and setting your intention to eat mindfully, offer gratitude for the food you are about to eat. When you express gratitude for your food, you create a space for deriving pleasure from your food in a big way. This can be a powerful practice to reduce stress and emotional eating as gratitude helps to alleviate stress and anxiety. When practicing gratitude for your food before you take a bite, recognize the preparation and the life giving nutrients in your food—as well as the pleasure you will experience by eating it. Be grateful and notice the impact of gratitude on your physical body as well as your mood state.

Try these three mindful strategies to remain present, focused and engaged as you make choices about what you eat and how you eat it this holiday season. Taking time to slow down, breathe, set an intention to eat mindfully and practice gratitude will allow for health and fulfillment throughout the entire holiday season.

How to Identify the Emotions Driving Your Food Cravings

When emotions are the driving force that cause your food cravings, it is vital to develop emotional awareness. If you have been avoiding emotions through emotional eating—or any other mindless form of numbing them out—this can feel like an overwhelming (and emotional) mountain to climb.

As humans, we tend to seek pleasure and avoid pain. While pleasure is an important part of life, generally, life cannot exist without both, and at times, this includes experiencing discomfort and pain. If you spend your life avoiding pain, you limit your ability to truly experience the pleasures in your life to their fullest.

While emotional eating can be triggered by any emotion, it is generally driven by a desire to avoid or numb out uncomfortable emotions. Discomfort is not experienced as pleasure and we tend to want it to just stop. Food can temporarily trigger the pleasure center in the brain causing a temporary suppression of the uncomfortable emotion. However, it does not just go away! It comes back, along with all of the other emotions you have been avoiding with food.

Learning to identify emotions and understand why you are experiencing them in the first place is essential. While it can feel daunting, knowing you have been avoiding the feelings for a reason, being able to create a more peaceful relationship with food, as well as with yourself is worth the effort. Know that this is a process, it takes time and indeed a good bit of effort. 

To get started, it is helpful to have a feelings/emotions journal. If you have no idea where to start with identifying, much less feeling your feelings, you can download a feelings wheel like this one here. Giving yourself dedicated time to building your emotional awareness muscle is important.

If you wanted to strengthen your biceps, you wouldn’t do just one bicep curl and expect to create the strength you desire and be done for life! You have to do many repetitions—and in order to maintain the strength you create, you must be consistent. You will most likely have to feel a little sore in order for growth to happen.

When you check in, you are identifying and exploring your emotions, this helps you build your emotional awareness muscles. You can continue to develop your emotional awareness by preparing yourself, having a plan, and committing to check in emotionally with yourself consistently.

Choose a time to give yourself space with your journal and emotions wheel and check in with how you are feeling right now. Ask yourself if there have been any emotions you experienced throughout the day today or even the day before that want to be recognized.

Once you acknowledge that a feeling is there, check in with how that particular emotion impacts your physical body. What’s occurring internally as you bring up or allow yourself to feel this emotion? Again, try not to judge your experience but witness it, be present with it, and if it’s uncomfortable try not to run from it—if it is comfortable, try not to cling to it.

Spend time observing this feeling and engage with it from the perspective of witnessing it. Become a silent observer of your emotions.

Now allow yourself to discover the why. Ask yourself, “why did I experience that emotion?” “What happened to create that specific emotion?” Try not to judge, just be curious. Name the feeling, observe it, and now understand the why. This is powerful information about your internal response to—and experience of your life. Emotions are valuable information about your experience of your life and allow you to make choices based on your internal experience.

Do you need to take action on the feeling? When you understand the why behind the feeling, you can decide if there is anything you need to do. If you are anxious, is there something you need to do? If you are angry, is there something you need to say? If you are bored, is there something constructive you could do? How can you take action in a way that is healthy and allows you to feel empowered and in control.

Now you have the opportunity to let it go! If you have allowed yourself to authentically feel your emotion, be non-judgmentally aware of it and derive the important information from it, you can make a choice about whether or not you need to take action. Now it is time to let it go. Releasing emotions comes with time and practice, practice and time.

Allow yourself to consistently show up for your emotions—all of your emotions—and you will find them to be less scary. Additionally, you will begin to feel more and more emotionally empowered. There are no “bad” feelings, just some that may be more comfortable than others, however, they are all vitally important to be aware of in order to make a choice about how to respond. Every emotion has a purpose and is a valuable element of being a human and of being alive.

As you begin to feel more comfortable experiencing your emotions, you can specifically apply these concepts and practices to eating. When you are experiencing a craving, you can ask yourself what you are actually hungry for in the moment. You may find more often than not, it is not actually food! Then you have an opportunity to make a choice.

You create the opportunity to make empowered decisions regarding how to respond to your emotions and how to choose the foods you truly want to eat—not because of an attempt to temporarily numb an emotion, but to enjoy the taste and experience of eating that particular food.

When you consistently practice emotional awareness, you will end the cycle of escaping your emotions with food. If you find you could benefit from support in this area, reach out, find support and begin to grow your emotional awareness. This creates an opportunity to make peace with food by making peace with yourself.

Mindful Eating

Have you ever finished eating an entire meal and you don’t remember tasting one bite? Have you ever gotten to the bottom of a bag of chips and wondered how you got there? These are examples of mind-less eating. Mindful eating is just the opposite. Mindful eating is offering yourself the time to savor your food. Mindful eating is pausing for a moment to be grateful for your food. It is taking the time to notice the aromas of your food, to chew your food thoroughly and really taste your food. When you eat mindfully you notice the impact your food choices have on your body and your mind.

To understand mindful eating, it is helpful to understand mindfulness as a practice. Mindfulness is paying attention from moment to moment with a nonjudgmental awareness. It is being completely grounded and present in the here and the now. The past can only exist as a memory within your mind and the future can only exist as a fantasy within your mind. When you engage with the present moment, you are truly aware and awake in your life. When you bring this concept into every aspect of your life, you become more peaceful and content.

Living mindfully allows you to be conscious and clear as you make any choice. When you bring mindfulness into your mealtimes, you will be more in tune, conscious and clear about what you choose to eat. Remaining nonjudgmental is essential. When you are calm and grounded while eating, you are more likely to assimilate the nutrients in your food. Digestion begins before you even take a bite. Allowing this process to be peaceful, mindful and pleasurable will enhance your life in many ways.

When you tune out the stressors such as your cell phone, TV, emails and social media, and tune into your experience of eating, you will create a closer relationship with your food. When eating mindfully, you will notice your hunger and full cues with more awareness. This creates freedom to make a choice in the present moment. Eating mindfully offers the opportunity to recognize how your food choices make you feel: mentally, physically, emotionally, energetically and spiritually. Mindful eating is extremely powerful and helps to reduce and heal emotional, stress and disordered eating.

To begin integrating mindful eating into your daily life, try this practice starting today. Begin with one meal or snack and commit to eating it mindfully. Turn off your cell phone and any other distractions such as the TV or loud music. Take a few slow, steady and deep breaths. Look at your food, take a moment to be grateful for it. Notice the aromas of your food. As you begin to eat, become aware of the textures of your food. If you are eating with your hands, place your food down between bites. If you are using a utensil, place it down between bites. Practice chewing slowly and thoroughly, really tasting and savoring your food.

When you are finished with your meal or snack, reflect on the impact of your food choice. Tune into the physical sensations you experience after eating this food. Take some slow, deep breaths and notice if you feel satisfied by what you ate and how full you feel. Notice if you enjoyed what you ate. Become aware of your energy and mood following this mindful eating practice. Thank yourself for taking this time to eat mindfully and to tune into your body. As you continue to bring mindful eating into your daily routine, notice the impact on your relationship with food as well as with yourself.