Health

'Lay Off Me, I'm Starving': Newsy Tries Mindful Eating

A health psychologist says you can eat anything as long as you eat it mindfully.

'Lay Off Me, I'm Starving': Newsy Tries Mindful Eating
Danny Matteson / Newsy
SMS

Dr. Lynn Rossy: "You're on the 'see food, eat food' diet?"

Newsy's Sadé Carpenter: "Yes. Yes I am."

SC: "I'm Sadé."

Newsy's Kristin Rohlwing: "And I'm Kristin."

We both love to eat. 

But lately, we haven't had the best relationship with food. 

We have snacks at arm's length and coffee practically runs through our veins. Like more than 60 percent of working professionals, we also eat lunch at our desks.

It's time to change that, so we tried a technique known as "mindful eating."

LR: "The thing that I wanted to do was, I wanted to take everybody, take you all through, what is, I call the BASICS of mindful eating, all right? The BASICS is an acronym and we're going to go through each letter, one by one. And to start out, B stands for 'breathe and belly check.'" 

LR: "OK? So just take a few breaths."

 

LR: "People don't breathe."

SC: "Obvious... clearly, like, I'm having a hard time breathing."

KR: "That's a lot of breaths to take."

LR: "A! We're going to go to A of the BASICS. Assess your food. What does it look like? What does it smell like? What are the colors? Where does it come from?" 

SC: "When we assess the food and I say, 'Is this something I want to eat?' What if the answer is no?"

LR: "Then don’t eat it."

SC: "Then just don't eat it?"

LR: "Uh-huh."

SC: "OK." 

KR: "Do you not want to eat that?"

SC: "No! I'm just saying. I was just wondering."

LR: "The S in BASICS stands for slow down. So we're going to eat slow." 

LR: "Mmm. One of the BASICS — I'm gonna go ahead and skip to this one — is to chew thoroughly. So the C in BASICS is to chew thoroughly. You don't wanna take a bite and gulp it down whole."

LR: "So chewing thoroughly, you're actually sending messages to the brain that your body's getting full. There's actually signals that go from your mouth when it's chewing to your brain that says, 'Oh! Person eating. I must be getting full soon.' Right?" 

SC: "I feel like the 'Jeopardy' music should be playing as I chew."

LR: "Now, so wait a minute. You are already halfway through so we need to do another BASICS."

KR: "Oh! OK. I'm more than halfway through."

LR: "So assess your hunger. How hungry are you now?"

KR: "I feel like I don't know like slightly hungry like I could have another bite or two." 

LR: "OK."

KR: "But I was thinking about kind of like going along the crusts. That was my plan." 

LR: "I'm gonna also tell you about the last S of the BASICS ... and that is to savor your food. .... If you can't savor it, why eat it?" 

LR: "We ate it slow and we savored it. Woohoo!"

KR: "We enjoyed our social gathering."

KR: "What about alcoholic beverages?"

LR: "Well, you know alcohol is wonderful. You know, I mean have a glass of wine with your meal. I'm all for that."

SC: "Good, good."

KR: "That was the real question, 'Can I have my wine?'"

This video includes a clip from NBCMusic provided courtesy of APM Music.