Strategies for Eating Mindlessly / Strategies for More Mindful Eating

Eleven Strategies of Mindless Eating:

·       ·Make food look like something else, a face, or a tiny airplane, or a rabbit, for example.

·Distract kids from the food itself, making eating a game so kids won’t think about the fact that they’re eating.

·Make food and eating a battle ground of wills.

·Connect eating to punishment or reward.

·Tell kids to clean their plates.

·Tell them what and how much to eat.

·Sneak vegetables into other foods so no one can taste them or get to like them.

·View eating as a mere physical necessity, like going to the gas station or going to the toilet, instead of taking time to enjoy and savor.

·Eat in front of the TV.

·Make the same foods over and over, week after week, utilitarian-style.

·Make healthy foods spartan and bland, allowing junk food to outdo them in appeal.

Eleven Ways to Eat More Mindfully:

1.Make the tastiest healthy dishes you can manage.

2.Serve the biggest variety possible, using spices and herbs to vary the flavors and making new dishes continually for nonstop surprise and novelty.

3.Serve all healthy foods and allow children to decide themselves which ones and how much to eat.

4.Talk more about how food is good than how it’s good for you.

5.Get kids involved in buying and preparing, even growing, what they eat.

6.Do nothing else when you eat. No TV, no screens, no distractions.

7.Don’t eat in the car or on the run any more than you can help it.

8.Have regular family meal times around the table as often as possible.

9.Serve in courses to slow down the process and really pay attention to each part of the meal.

10.Focus attention on the food: talk about it, bring up an interesting fact about it, or talk about its flavor, textures, appearance, smell.

11.Talk about how you feel after eating.

Other posts on similar subjects:

“Close Encounters of the Food Kind: Single-Minded, Whole-Hearted Attention to Eating”

“Nine Worst & Best Things to Say to Kids at the Table”

Sacred Appetite / Anna Migeon  / 3 August 2009 / All rights reserved

This post was featured on Food Renegade’s Fight Back Friday on Sept. 17, 2010.