Have you ever tried savoring a single bite of food, blocking out all other distractions? The task is surprisingly tough, yet immensely rewarding. On the latest episode of the Dirobi Health Show, we're stripping back the complexities of everyday life to focus on mindful eating, a practice that offers a plethora of benefits while costing nothing but a bit of attention. I share my adventure into this practice, revealing how, amidst a barrage of daily thoughts, turning my focus to the textures and flavors on my tongue has become a grounding ritual, transforming the way I interact with my meals and, by extension, my overall health.
We unravel the research-backed transformation that mindful eating can bring, such as reducing your food intake by 20%, increasing meal satisfaction, and decreasing the frequency of binge eating. I take you through the concept of observing your thoughts like cars on a highway—learning to detach and let them pass without letting them sweep you away. This episode isn't just about savoring your food; it's about changing your relationship with eating, turning each meal into an opportunity for presence and reflection. Tune in and join me on this journey to a more mindful approach to what's on our plates and, ultimately, to a more balanced lifestyle.
Find episode links, notes and artwork at:
https://blog.dirobi.com
This show is for informational purposes only.
None of the information in this podcast should be construed as dispensing medical advice.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Have you ever tried savoring a single bite of food, blocking out all other distractions? The task is surprisingly tough, yet immensely rewarding. On the latest episode of the Dirobi Health Show, we're stripping back the complexities of everyday life to focus on mindful eating, a practice that offers a plethora of benefits while costing nothing but a bit of attention. I share my adventure into this practice, revealing how, amidst a barrage of daily thoughts, turning my focus to the textures and flavors on my tongue has become a grounding ritual, transforming the way I interact with my meals and, by extension, my overall health.
We unravel the research-backed transformation that mindful eating can bring, such as reducing your food intake by 20%, increasing meal satisfaction, and decreasing the frequency of binge eating. I take you through the concept of observing your thoughts like cars on a highway—learning to detach and let them pass without letting them sweep you away. This episode isn't just about savoring your food; it's about changing your relationship with eating, turning each meal into an opportunity for presence and reflection. Tune in and join me on this journey to a more mindful approach to what's on our plates and, ultimately, to a more balanced lifestyle.
Find episode links, notes and artwork at:
https://blog.dirobi.com
This show is for informational purposes only.
None of the information in this podcast should be construed as dispensing medical advice.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Welcome to the Diary of the Health Show. We live in a fast-paced world. We have quick meals, we multitask, we rush, rush, rush everywhere, and that is the norm instead of the exception for most people. And mindfulness and mindful eating are no longer buzzwords. They are very popular. We've all heard about them, we've seen them on the cover of Time Magazine, we get blog posts about them in our email, we have friends who've started meditating. We've probably all dabbled in it. However, I have come to believe that mindful eating one of the top health habits we all know by now, hopefully is simultaneously the most difficult and the simplest of all health habits. It's the simplest because it's instantly accessible, it's very easy to understand, doesn't cost any money and we get to practice it every single day, every single time we put something in our mouth. Simple it's difficult because we're human beings that have somewhere between 20,000 and 80,000 thoughts a day, including multiple thoughts, while we chew a single bite. If you've ever, if you've never, paid attention to this, try it next time you're eating. Try to take one bite of food and think about nothing but the smell, the taste, the consistency and the overall experience of chewing that one bite, and see if you can keep all other thoughts out of your mind while you chew one bite to the consistency of applesauce, and I bet, like me, you will discover that you probably can't. Another little thought experiment. If you don't believe me, you can try, right this second and pull out your watch or some sort of timer, set it for 10 seconds and try to have no thoughts in your mind just for 10 seconds. Remember that the very thought oh, I'm doing good, oh, this is easy. Well, that's a thought that's about, that's a thought about what you're doing.
Speaker 1:Trying to have zero thoughts for 10 seconds is actually a very, very difficult thing to do. Now, importantly, we don't have to turn off our thoughts. As a matter of fact, that is a fool's errand, and anyone who is an experienced meditator will tell you that even the best among us, those at controlling their thoughts, the most experienced Zen Buddhist on the planet, who's experienced the highest level of enlightenment, still has thoughts come into their mind. But the relationship to the thoughts and not letting the thoughts take over or captivate them or completely distract them is the difference between the experienced practitioner and the rest of us. It's kind of like if you have a flat tire on the freeway and you're on the car side of the car trying to on the driver's side of the car and the traffic is rushing by you and you're trying to fix this flat tire, you will think of not much, your thoughts will be racing about this entire experience, you'll feel a sense of danger, et cetera. But if you move to the other side of the car, fix the flat on the other side, not near as bad, you don't feel like you're about to be run over every second, but still fairly mentally traumatizing. Now, if you move 50 feet away from the car, boom all of a sudden you feel quite safe and the wind isn't rushing at you quite how it was and the noise and the sense of impending doom goes down. But if you are a mile away, in a high rise, watching someone change a tire on a car on a freeway and watching the little ant-like cars go by, it's a peaceful scene and in all instances those are the same experience being observed from different places. And so, in a similar way, the way we experience the thoughts, whether the thoughts feel urgent and rushing and have a sense of impending doom or I have to do this or I got to do that. I got to change my plan I got to go here, I got to go there versus allowing them to come and go with a minimal amount of emotion or attachment. That's the key.
Speaker 1:Now let's bring that back to food. How does that relate to food? Well, we know from research now. There's been a lot of research on mindful eating and mindfulness generally, and we know that the practice of being fully present and engaged in the moment, without judgment, with our eating, can help us eat 20% less, helps us enjoy our food more. They have found, when testing people who tend to binge eat, that they binge eat less after being taught how to eat mindfully. And also emotional eating goes down when a person is trained in mindful eating. On the flip side, mindless eating has been correlated to anxiety, overeating and weight gain.
Speaker 1:So mindful eating is a worthy and healthy goal and simultaneously instantly simple and accessible, as I mentioned, and very, very difficult to do. But rather than beat ourselves up about how our last meal was rushed and anxious, we simply focus on the present and bringing ourselves back. We just try more often and with more bites to be mindful. We don't beat ourselves up when we realize we've been lost and thought for the last five minutes and completely down to corn dog that we didn't even mean to eat. Instead, we just slow down, smile at ourselves, look at that last bite and decide oh, I'm actually feeling pretty good, I'm full, I don't need that last bite of corn dog, throw in the trash, move on and next time we try again. So we just keep bringing ourselves back and celebrate when we bring ourselves back. Don't so much beat ourselves up every time we get distracted. We are human beings.
Speaker 1:So here's a couple of things that we can do. We, first of all, ought to try to prepare our food mindfully, ideally by being more mindful about what we eat. We tend to make our own food more. We tend to spend more time in the kitchen, and that is, in itself, a healthy habit, and so mindful preparation of food or, if you're out and about or you live a very fast paced life where you eat most of your meals at restaurants, being mindful about your restaurant choices is also a great place to start. Next, being mindful about the choice of foods, of course, trying to eat whole foods as much as possible, cutting back on those foods that are high in calories, sugar, too much, fats, etc. All of those things are a part of the process that we mindfully prepare to eat. Next, mindful eating is about experiencing food more intensely, which is fantastic because, if you think about it, most health regimens are about denial, they're about less, they're about eating stuff you don't like. But mindful eating is not. Mindful eating is simply eating in a very mindful way, without distraction, engaging all of our senses to enjoy each bite fully. What's the downside? There is none. There's no downside to mindful eating, even if we're not eating the best thing that we could be or we're having a treat that we don't have that often. But even with the treat, we should be eating it very, very mindfully.
Speaker 1:The dirobe undiet emphasizes the importance of eating solely and mindfully, suggesting practices such as eliminating distractions during meals, so trying not to eat in front of the television, although eating with other people is a great habit and so other people might be considered a distraction. But we do also know from the studies of the blue zones that people who eat with their family, and especially multi-generational meals with grandchildren and parents and children and grown-ups together, is actually a very healthy habit and adding some sociality into our eating. But other distractions, such as reading the paper or, worse, everyone looking at their phone while they should be together. Those are distractions we could get rid of. So eating chewing our food to the consistency of applesauce is one of those habits. That is a very worthy goal. Also putting our utensils down between bites so that we are more likely to chew our food to the consistency of applesauce, and by doing these things we'll have increased satisfaction with our food. We'll also better digest our food, which, of course, is critical. We have a digestive and gut microbiome crisis really right now going on in the country, and if you slow down eating, that actually can make a major contribution to your gut health. You'll tend to eat about 20% less and you'll digest the food better and absorb all the nutrients out of it. You'll also reduce overeating. Again, I mentioned this earlier people who eat mindfully eat about 20% less. So overall, our enjoyment of food will go up. It'll be easier to stick to other health habits. We're less likely to make bad food choices. And so a few more tips Avoid eating while standing up.
Speaker 1:That's one of the ones I need to work on. I try to. You know, if I sit down, I'm more likely to focus on the food. Also, while driving, I try, unless it's really you know, if we're going on a long journey or something like that. Sometimes it's just not practical to not eat in the car. But if you think about it, how many times do we eat in a car that we really don't need to? It's just because we're always in such a rush. Right, mindful eating and mindful living are both very, very worthy goals. Preparing our food early enough to enjoy it slowly and mindfully, to then leave in time that we don't have to eat in the car is another way of approaching this. Do your best to focus 100% on your food and not multitask.
Speaker 1:Another thing we can practice is gratitude for our meal, and another aspect of gratitude for our meal is to take a minute and look at your plate and think about where each food came from. If we trace it back, somebody grew the food, somebody worked in the fields to cultivate the food. Somebody drove a truck to deliver it to some food lot or marketplace. Somebody else sailed with it across an ocean. In some cases. People work, often at low pay, to make sure that the stores near us are always stocked with food so that we can easily access it, and so bringing awareness to the people in the process and sending out some love to them. Thank you for growing this food. Many of these people really sacrificed and don't make a lot of money in the food supply chain to provide us the modern conveniences we have, and so spending a few minutes just throwing out some gratitude to the universe for these wonderful people who make it so that we can eat this delicious food on demand from all over the world is a nice practice.
Speaker 1:Mindfulness and mindful eating are powerful practices. They can enhance our weight loss journey, making it more enjoyable and sustainable. By being fully present and engaging with the active eating, we can improve our relationship with food less emotional eating, less binge eating and lead to healthier choices and more lasting weight loss. So remember the goal is progress, not perfection. Start small, be patient with yourself. Even if you only one mindful meal a day, that could be an improvement over what you've been doing right.
Speaker 1:And make sure and download our free DiRobi undi it the seven principles to help you in your health journey. It's available at dirobicom under resources. Also, depending on when you listen to this, we have some really cool deals going on right now at dirobicom Currently a kind of a fantastic deal and that is you got a free bottle of Mimi's Miracle Fasting Booster with every order. Now, this isn't a sample, it's not a free sample. It's a full bottle to try and this is a really impressive product.
Speaker 1:It is a metabolic booster, it's an energy booster. It helps the various physiological pathways that are going on when you're in a fasted state. Now, even if you simply take this after you finish eating your last meal of the day and then don't eat again till eight or nine o'clock in the morning, you'll notice a difference. If you struggle with late night snacking, this could be a tremendous product for you to try, because taking this right after you eat that last meal will help you to reduce cravings, have less appetite and then have all the magic happen during the night in that fasted state that you want to have happen, so that you wake up with your hormones reset, your brain, reset your digestion, reset, ready to move on with a new day. So it's a fantastic product.
Speaker 1:Check it out at dirobicom and, like I said, any order and it's automatic. You don't need a coupon code. You just go make any purchase at dirobicom and the bottle will be thrown in absolutely free. And if you're listening to this later and that deal isn't on anymore, still check out the deals page at dirobicom for whatever current deal we have going and use the coupon code podcast to save 10% off anything at your heart desires. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you got something out of this episode and also enjoyed my dog, kiki, in the background for parts of the episode. She doesn't join us every time, but sometimes someone comes to the door or makes a noise, or Amazon comes by, whatever, and she likes to make herself known. So until next time, this is Dave Sherwin, wishing you health and success.