6 Easy & Effective Mind-Body Tips to Eating Healthy

There is increasing evidence that what we put into our bodies plays as big a role in the presence or absence of disease than just about anything else. Those who eat healthy simply have a longer life and a better quality of life when compared to those who do not choose to eat healthy.

One of the more common and harmful dysfunctional eating habits is emotional eating or emotional overeating. This is something that many of us have experienced and for some, it is commonplace and can lead to serious health consequences.

When we are emotional eaters we typically struggle with the necessary skills to deal with stress, pain, fear, and loneliness and so we use food to deal with them. Our diet is far from healthy and depending on how often we use food to cope with life, it can be downright harmful. Many times, emotional eaters don’t know what a healthy diet looks like because they are stuck in the vicious cycle of binging when life’s problems become too overwhelming.

Here are my 6 habits that you can incorporate into your daily routine in order to help develop better eating habits, but don’t forget…..the emotional side still needs to be dealt with.  I am going to give you those tools later on in some future blogs!

6 Easy & Effective Mind-Body Tips to Eating Healthy

1. Watch your portion sizes. Use a system to help discover what a portion size is. There are many tools online to help with this such as, using your palm to gauge the size of a protein or get yourself a digital weigh scale.  In my line of coaching, I provide my clients with proper portion control measurements.
2. Make your plate colorful. Recognize the value of colorful fruits and vegetables, especially orange, green, yellow, and blue fruits and vegetables. Each offers unique health opportunities and many colorful foods contain helpful antioxidants which scavenge for unhealthy oxygen free radicals in the body.
3. Take your time eating meals. One thing I say to my clients is that ‘the speed you eat your food is directly related to the speed you live your life’. Interesting, isn’t it? There is about a 20-minute lag time between the time you fill your stomach and brain signals that the body has had enough food. If you eat slowly and mindfully, you can avoid the trap of overeating, indigestion, and weight gain.
4. Recognize the value of small snacks. The rhythm of our eating is just as important as it is for the rhythm of our sleep and our cycles. When our rhythm is off, that usually means that something is going on.  When we don’t take time in our day to properly eat, our bodies and blood sugar suffer.  When we incorporate healthy snacks into our diet, we avoid having too many highs and lows in our daily diet and have energy throughout the day.
5. Don’t make your evening meal your largest. Did you know that our bodies metabolize food the most optimally at high noon (between noon and 1:30 pm – when the sun is at its highest) far better than in the evening? This allows the body a chance to metabolize a large meal and avoids the trap of eating too much before sleeping—something that can lead to insomnia and cause bad sleeping patterns.
6. Eat with others. Food should be part of a social experience with an exchange of conversation happening while eating. When we are happy and surrounded by happiness, it forces you to eat slower and it puts the meal in perspective as part of a social experience rather than loneliness.