It’s the time of
year that we can be filled with regret that we indulged so heavily during the
holiday season. Our good intentions on
January 1 are proving a little more difficult to maintain as the cold, gray
days drag on. It’s time to take a whole
new look at how we fuel our bodies, letting go, once and for all, of the label “dieting”.
New neurological
research is helping science to understand how malleable the brain can be and
giving us support in the ancient practices of mindfulness. New technologies can actually measure brain
activity and indicate the precise optimum time of intervention in a habitual
behaviour (“Breaking Habits”, Scientific American, November 2014).
As human beings, we are constantly in the flow of waves of sensation. Being mindful means recognizing the
inevitability of these waves of sensation and greeting them with curiosity,
openness and compassion. Cravings and
hunger cues are waves of sensation. The
model below suggests one way to greet these sensations. (International Journal
of Yoga Therapy, No. 22, 2012)
When we react
habitually to the wave of sensation, for example cravings for a sweet treat,
neurological pathways in the brain are reinforced. We may get to the end of the treat and not
really have full sensory recollection of the experience. How did I get to the bottom of the bag of
Oreos anyway???
Mindful eating asks
us to recognize the craving as sensation and ride that wave. If we can complete the ride, new neurological
pathways have been initiated that may help us create new, healthier behaviours.
Pausing before
eating makes sense as hormones that signal hunger and satiation take time to
emerge. For example, ghrelin is often
called the hunger hormone. Its call is
partly felt in the mesolimbic reward center of your brain, where feelings of
pleasure and satisfaction are processed.
This hormone spikes on a schedule depending on when you are used to
having this satisfaction of fuel. Finding
an alternative behaviour that also stimulates this pleasure center in the
midbrain may help curb the craving.
There is leptin
which is an appetite suppressing hormone.
It can take 20 minutes or more for the body fat, which produce leptin,
to receive the signal that we have had enough.
For many of us, we can absent mindedly consume the cookies, some soda
and some chips in that time. There are
other gut chemicals and at least two dozen other hormones that play a
role. The more overloaded the system is,
the weaker the feedback loop becomes. In
other words, if we have a history of eating indiscriminately or more than we
need, it gets harder to read when we really need fuel.
- Ride the wave of sensation. Feel the symptoms of craving food
without judgement, without needing to act upon them. Just for a few minutes.
- Do something else. Mindfulness practices such as breath
watching meditation (three minutes is enough to initiate a change), easy
stretching timed with deep breathing or focusing on physical sensations in
other body parts like feet or hands can ground you.
- Eating more slowly. Take one or two Oreos and really
register the colours, textures, smells and sounds of eating ever so
slowly. It may take 10 minutes just
to eat one cookie!
For a video guiding
you to try mindful eating, please refer to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5DfLKgJP8c.
For more information on mindfulness, meditation and your health, please email yoganetworkniagara@hotmail.com.
