A Simple Habit to Help You Take Charge of your Nutrition: Eat most meals on the Dining Table Without Distractions
We’re creature of Habits. Our brain loves to form associations and patterns to the point things start end up happening unconsciously.
When it comes to nutrition, we get so fixated on WHAT we eat but, in my experience 50% of good nutrition is about HOW we eat. You have A LOT more control over how you eat vs what you eat, especially in the initial stages of your nutrition journey or whichever environment you are in.
Want to know why? ———>
Our brain forms association between habits
When we go to a movie theatre, we might’ve had the largest meal of our lives just before but even then the experience seems incomplete without a bucket of popcorn. That’s because we’re so conditioned to eating popcorn at the movies.
When we regularly watch something while eating, our brain correlates both the activities. So whenever you eat, it feels incomplete without watching. But it works the other way as well. It’s the end of the night, you’ve decided to wind down by watching something and suddenly you feel like munching something even though you had your dinner maybe an hour back. So whenever you’ll watch something, you’ll crave something to eat. It’s important to disassociate these two activities from each other and unlearn these patterns.
2. Our brain forms associations to locations
Similarly if you’re someone who eats on the bed, or on your work table - you get the gist. Not only it affects your eating patterns but also interferes with other activities that are associated with that area. So it’s late at night and you’re trying to sleep but because you’re used to eating on the bed, all you can thinking about is that chocolate kept on your fridge door.
To counter this, dedicate an area - your dining table at home or cafeteria at work as the only place you eat something. This will also limit you to munch here & there once you start getting really disciplined and overtime help you control your cravings to a certain degree.
3. Watching TV while eating can lead to over eating
Ideally, our physiology regulates our appetite perfectly. We evolved to eat when we’re hungry, and stop when we’ve had enough. Of course, it doesn’t always work that way in our modern society. We’ve forgotten how to reconnect with these cues. And distractions don’t help either. So once you become mindful by removing the noise, it’s easier to overtime reconnect with your body and relearn these cues.
