How To Hack Your Lifestyle For Mindfulness With Nutrition

Learn how to hack your lifestyle for mindfulness with nutrition to support your health and well-being help us live a better life. Because as important as having a healthy body, it’s to have a healthy mind. Mindful thoughts of health and well-being help us live life with less stress and more focus.

“You are what you eat.”

I’m sure this quote is not new to you. But what does it actually imply? Is it like that hamburger meme?

To me, it goes beyond the jokes. It’s about becoming aware of the importance of nutrition in your life and how it affects your health and well-being.

What is “diet”?

Personally, I don’t have a problem with the word “diet”. Yet, I’ll avoid using it because it’s frequently associated with:

body shaming
eating disorders
radical (and unhealthy) methods
unpleasant food
disease-related eating habits

Without wanting to change your perception with a blog post, which is impossible, I still want to remind the other meaning of diet. It is “food and drink regularly provided or consumed, habitual nourishment.”¹

You may not have a complete change of heart about it after reading this; I understand it. But should you ever come up with the word “diet” on this blog, that’s what I’m talking about. On this post, I’ll refer it as “d$*%”, though.

In general, I’ll be using the word “intake” instead. Intake refers to the “amount of food taken into the body.” There’s a slight difference between intake and d$*%. But this difference doesn’t create problems understanding the idea behind it.

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Read also these posts about nutrition:

Understanding nutrition

Using Merriam-Webster’s definition for kids, nutrition is “the act or process of nourishing or being nourished: the processes by which a living thing takes in and uses nutrients.”²

Nutrition is not only about the food that you eat or even only the act of eating it. It involves our entire relationship with food, from the moment it enters our body until it leaves it.

It’s important to understand nutrition because it goes beyond satisfying hunger. It forces us to become aware of the effects food has on our body.

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How we eat these days

Food in our society looks and tastes a lot different from what our grandparents were accustomed to. Nowadays we have:

less whole foods
too much sugar
too much salt
too much (bad) fat
way too much high-fructose corn syrup

This change didn’t happen in one day. Our relationship with food evolved over the years the same way as our lifestyle has changed.

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Let’s face it: people don’t have much time to cook anymore. We make time here and there, but in the rush between family, work and endless appointments and to-do lists, it’s much easier to get some TV-dinner.

I’m not here to point a finger at you. I know exactly how it goes. The longer the days, the more chances you have to grab food. And this “food” is not of the most nutritious kind.

To me, overtime was an excuse for having way too much coffee and waffles from the vending machine. And when I got home, I had some bread with butter or Nutella.

Besides, all those commercials make you crave for dishes that don’t have any nutritional value. They brainwash us with unbelievable shapes and colors. We can almost smell them from our seats. And guess what we are going to choose the next time we do the groceries?

You might even have the good intention of eating well by getting some greens, but then they’re swimming in unhealthy sauce.

Mindful Nutrition

Mindfulness is about awareness. Instead of wasting our lifetime surviving, we give meaning to it. It triggers a shift in the way we see people, things and the world around us.

Mindful Nutrition is about taking this awareness to the way we see and deal with food. It takes factors like cravings, automatism, and peer pressure out of the equation. You develop an understanding of the ingredients of your meals, their nutrients, and role in sustaining your body. It doesn’t mean you are going to live on an eternal d$*% because it’ll not feel like that.

Putting into practice

Changing your eating habits doesn’t necessarily imply adopting one or another regimen. You may go vegetarian or vegan if you want. However, you can already improve your intake by adopting some very simple habits such as:

Read the labels
Keep a journal
Aim for balance

Read the labels

When shopping for clothes, we check their size. When we buy a car, we know exactly what features we want. When we go on vacation, we prefer to learn as much as possible about the place we will be visiting. Why can’t we do the same with our food?

The simple act of checking the “Nutrition Facts” list on the back of products will already give you an idea of what you’re taking home with you. This list includes the nutrients found in the product and their amount.

Some of the things I’m sure you’ll be surprised by is the presence of sugar almost anywhere, also for non-sweet items, for example.

Go to the List

Keep a journal

Writing down what you eat and how you felt afterward can be an enlightening exercise. It’ll help spot food reactions.

Note that you can react to certain ingredients up to 3 days after intake. That’s why a journal is handy.

Remembering what you ate everything single day of the week is not the most productive thing to do. Besides, you don’t eat the same dishes every day. What you had for lunch today, you may be eating again only next month, over even later. Connecting the dots between your reactions now and later becomes a mission impossible.

It’s imperative to get to know yourself and your body for your personal improvement.

Go to the List

Aim for balance

Big changes start with small steps.

Habits are not built in one day. It takes lots and lots of repetition. Instead of going crazy and starting the latest d$*% madness, bring some balance to your intake.

From the moment that you start writing things down, you’ll see what you’re eating too much or too little. Before making radical changes, start by bringing up the nutrients you generally lack. Afterward, start dimming the excesses.

Evaluate how you feel taking into consideration your mood and energy level as well. Are you experiencing sugar drops, for example? How is your digestion? Everything is important.

Go to the List

Moving forward

Mindful Nutrition is about taking the act of eating to another level. You stop chewing food aimlessly and start nurturing your body. You take the time to look at your board, smell the food and taste it.

Avoid distractions when having your meals and stay at the moment. Sometimes it can be hard when having a lunch meeting, but whenever possible make it a me-time.

Don’t let the rush of your day spoil the moment. Whether you have a one-hour lunch break or only 15 minutes to grab something, you can still do it. It’s not about time, it’s about the way you approach your intake.

Are you mindful about your nutrition?

Read all the posts of this series:

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Be Healthy and Live Fully.

References:

1. Merriam-Webster
2. Merriam-Webster