How to Stop Mindless Eating

If you’re often finding yourself snacking or going into the kitchen without even really being sure if you’re hungry or checking with your hunger cues first and stopping mindless eating seems to be a daily struggle, this guide is for you.

Hi, my name is Jimena Ramirez. I’m a beauty change coach and I’m the director of coaching and program strategy at Body Brain Alliance.

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Why Do We Engage in Mindless Eating?

First of all, why do we do it? Why are we eating mindlessly without realizing it, without even asking ourselves if we are hungry? Well, mindless eating is first of all a behavior. It’s not good or bad. It is helpful or maybe unhelpful to our goals, but we don’t need to add a layer of morality to this behavior. So as in every behavior, we want to have a better understanding of why this is happening. 

In our one-on-one coaching program, we actually work with a lot of clients who are finding themselves engaging in these behaviors and they want to work on making more aligned choices.

Identifying the Root Causes of Mindless Eating

Just like any other behavior, this has a root cause. So we always want to start with asking ourselves, what is happening here? When are we engaging in this behavior? When are we most likely to actually start eating and not realize whether we are hungry in the first place or whether that is aligned with the choices that we would like to make? 

We want to start with awareness. It always starts with awareness and with learning more about our behaviors. And in order to do that, we want to add that layer of neutrality.

 

Building Awareness

Questions to Ask Yourself

Here are some things to start asking yourself:

• • When is mindless eating happening the most?

• • Is it happening at a specific time of the day?

• • Is it happening on specific days or specific moments?

Maybe you’re finding yourself snacking a little more at night when the kids go to bed, after a long day at work, or when you’re driving back home. These are all things to start asking yourself. Does a certain event seem to trigger that? Maybe studying for exams, maybe the kids are fighting over dinner and you find yourself having some downtime right after, and that is a time when you resort to mindless eating.

Understanding Your Mindless Eating Triggers

Can you describe exactly what is happening when you’re mindlessly eating? Can you describe maybe a step-by-step situation so that you can have a better idea and trace things back to the behavior? What is creating it? How you’re feeling and how you can identify any needs that are coming up there?

Recognizing Hunger and Fullness Cues

How good do you feel you are at recognizing your hunger and fullness cues? Is this something that we need to work a little more? 

What else is taking up your attention besides eating when you’re finding yourself mindlessly eating? Are you watching TV? Are you scrolling on your phone? Are you talking to someone? 

Try to start taking notes on all these different things and keep a record of that. This can be in an app, this can be having a notebook. This can be a moment you sit down and actually journal about it, so try to do a brain dump and start paying attention. We want to really tune into that awareness, first of all.

 

Making Changes

Proactive Steps

Now, how to make some changes around this behavior. Once you have that understanding what we’re talking about, something that we want to do is start identifying things that we can tweak here and there. The first thing we want to do is we want to start being proactive about what we found out. 

If mindless eating is a way to cope with stress or with boredom, what else can you do to actually satisfy those needs that are coming up right there? This could look like maybe committing to go on a walk before you settle down at home.

Mindful Eating Practices

Connecting with Your Eating

Prepping your meals slowly so that you can connect with your eating, actually tune into those hunger cues, those fullness cues when you are engaging in the process of eating. Maybe this could have to do with doing some meditation as soon as you get home. Try to understand a little more about what is creating this behavior and actually address that in a proactive way.

Immersive Eating Experience

The second thing we can do is we can start working on eating a little more mindfully. Now, some clients tell me that the struggle of this is that it’s really hard to just sit down and only pay attention to your meal, and that is not what I’m asking you to do, but I am asking you to be fully immersed in the experience that you’re going through. 

Try to really taste the food that you have there. Try to really think about the texture, try to understand a little more about what you are enjoying there, what you’re not. Try to really be present in that moment and in that experience. 

This is something you can do even if you’re doing something else, just allow yourself the time to focus mainly on the food that you’re having.

 

Creating Connection with Yourself

Physical and Mental Check-in

The third thing here is creating some connection with yourself. How are you feeling physically and mentally before you sit down to have that meal? Try to understand a little more about this before you start eating. 

This is a practice that we can actually take on, so you can even do a body scan here to start thinking about how you’re feeling from head to toe and start understanding a little more about how that has an impact on your eating habits. 

How are you feeling about your thirst cues? How are you feeling about how relaxed you are or how tired you are? Are those things that you can start to understand too before you have your meal?

Post-Meal Reflection

Now, after you have your meal, how satisfied are you feeling? Are you full? What is the difference between being satisfied and being full? What does that feel like to your body?

 

Behavioral Design

Environmental Adjustments

Lastly, we want to do some behavioral design. What would it look like to make some arrangements in your environment so that you can make this decision-making process slower and more in touch with yourself? 

This could look like, for example, switching up some things in your pantry. It could look like using post-it notes to remind yourself that you want to check in with those cues before hunger cues, thirst cues. It could look like, am I feeling good? Am I feeling relaxed? Do I need to go for a walk? 

It could look like little reminders of that. It could even look like actually keeping things that you want to use to make those behaviors more accessible to you nearby.

Creating Friction

For example, I could go by my sneakers by the door so that I can encourage myself to go for a walk. This is all about the idea of creating friction or not creating friction for different habits. We want to create friction for those habits that we want to do less of, and we want to reduce friction for the habits that we actually want to engage in more. 

So if the idea here is that we are making checking with ourselves a little more accessible, engaging in behaviors that actually help us cope with stress, with boredom, with whatever we identify in that first step, that is we want to reduce that friction. I want to create a little more friction in reaching for that snack and making that so easily available.

Practical Tips

Something else that we can do here is actually putting our food on a plate. If you’re deciding to have a snack, that is totally fine. Let’s put that on a plate and make sure that we are reaching for one piece at a time. Those are little changes that we can make in our environment.

Conclusion

Above all, remember that mindless eating is an ingrained behavior. It’s a habit that our brain is used to. We don’t need to add that extra judgment to things and tell ourselves that we’re doing anything wrong or add morality into this. So remember to add neutrality. 

Remember to treat this just as you would with any other habit and remind yourself that practice matters. Be patient with yourself in this process and actually expect to redirect your behavior over and over again until we can make this habit of checking with yourself and making more conscious decisions a little more easily available and natural to you.

If you have anything you’d like to share with us regarding this topic, you are welcome to drop it in the comments. We would love to hear from you.