Curiosity: Combat Overeating

Mindfulness is one way to connect to overeating.

What do I mean by that? When we observe from a mindset of attention and curiosity, we notice a few cues that encourage eating. We can see that:

• environment such as seeing yummy food in every break room USA might shift our focus to the food when we weren’t even thinking about food or eating
• habits (I know this is a HUGE topic as a quick search on Amazon demonstrates) also contribute to mindless overeating
• food chemistry – not the kind I both took in college and taught but the whole commercial enterprise of researching what consumers most like in food such as the taste, texture, smell, appearance and “feel” in foods. I have a pinch of this consumer research in my experience. Foods which are high in sugar, salt and fat produce happy chemicals in some brain regions. Pause and think about the craving for comfort food in moments of distress. . . and well, weeks and months during this pandemic. Certainly the world has been baking up a storm! Speaking of storms the foods most universally appealing are high in fat, salt and sugar; kinda like a perfect storm!

All make a difference in why, what, when and how much we eat.

So how do we use this to combat overeating. If your Comfort Quotient has used appealing food for self-soothing, use your new knowledge of food chemistry to cut down on sugar or salt for a couple weeks to reset your taste for sugar or salt to a level that may not be defined by focus groups for XYZ food.

Curiosity allows you to observe the simple elegance of Mindful Eating.

Savor whatever YOU choose to eat!