5 Proven Strategies to Avoid Mindless Eating and Stick to Your Healthy Eating Plan

Is it too common that you would eat without caring how much you eat? How you eat? How often you eat? It’s not that uncommon. 

we have strayed away from good table manners, into very toxic mindless eating behaviour, when you do one thing more than once and it starts to affect your eating pattern negatively, this is what we call mindless eating behavior and it can lead to unintentional weight gain and poor management of conditions like Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure.

THE 5 MOST COMMON MINDLESS EATING BEHAVIOUR

1. Tv induced amnesia.
2. Multitasking pros.
3. Emotion eaters.
4. Meal times absentees.
5. Introverts.

1. Tv induced amnesia

We all love some entertainment, and TV provides the best,
you may want to catch up with News At 1pm, or a movie, or a cartoon for the kids,
but what you may not realize is that Tv interferes with your concentration, and
when you are eating at the same time, then there will be a problem. You may not
actually realize how much you eat, and more so monitor how your kids are
eating. This can easily lead to overeating, hence unnecessary weight gain.

Important to do is;

Turn off the TV Laptop, or any other gadgets you are
using during meal times, and let meal times be meal times.

2. MULTITASKING

Multitasking seems to be the way to go these days, there’s
just so much to do 24 hours a day. But as I’ve said already, multitasking
divides your mind, and may totally affect your eating habits. in most cases, we jump to fast foods while multitasking and these foods could contain too much fat, sugar, and even salt.

Important to do is;

Take time to plan your calendar and activities well, and plan
for meal times as well.

3. EMOTION EATERS

Things may not always go as we have planned, and sometimes
we get sad and other times extremely happy. These extreme emotions may lead to
extreme excitement for food and sometimes refusal to eat. For example eating to feel better, in what we call Food comfort. Either way…

Seek professional help when depressed, or stressed and avoid
stress eating. Emotional eating can easily lead you to unwanted weight gain.

4. MEALTIME ABSENTEES

Mealtime absentees always come up with excuses, weight
loss, or being busy but skipping a meal is never a good idea… If you are
looking to maintain a healthy weight? 

Important to do is;

Have all three meals of the day, and
additional healthy snacks whenever possible.

 5. INTROVERTS

Introverts always keep it to themselves and occasionally
would want to be alone. This can adversely affect their eating habits. In this
case…

Join the rest of the family, friends or colleagues during
meal times, it will be very useful.

Here are four unhealthy food extremes that are also related to mindless eating; 

1. Food as a reward; like promising your child that you will buy him ice cream when he does well in a test.
2. Food as guilt; you make your children eat by force by comparing them with children out there who are probably going without food.
3. Food as punishment; threatening your child that if they don’t eat, they won’t play outside with other kids.
4. Food as comfort; eating to feel better about a situation.

all these are mindless eating behaviors and they can lead to unwanted weight gain, or in another extreme, an eating disorder.