Much of the last decade in nutrition has been focused on macro tracking, ie: weighing and measuring all your food items and tracking the grams of protein, carbohydrate and fat eaten per day. All of this, typically done, in an effort to eat in a caloric deficit, which is critical to achieving weight loss.
There are pros and cons to this approach, but one of the notable things about it, is that it’s time intensive. In fact, I had a friend this last year that had started a new program, was having great success losing weight and was elated about the results, but when he talked to me he said his experience so far was “intense.” Immediately this piqued my interest and I asked him what he found intense about it, to which he replied, “Well I’m measuring and tracking everything I eat!”
Now, in what I see, as a complete reactionary swing from the macro approach is the concept of mindful eating, which has been gaining significant traction in recent years. There are several terms out there for it, but mostly it is seen under the terms mindful eating or intuitive eating.
There are some small distinctions between the two termed approaches, this is the best definition I could come up with for both, from a systematic review of the research literature associated with these concepts.
Mindful Eating: making conscious choices regarding food, cultivating awareness of physical and psychological hunger and fullness cues. (Baked into this approach is the concept that if you are mindful and present during above situations that you will subsequently select ‘healthier’ foods.)
Intuitive Eating: proposes to increase individuals’ awareness of why, what and how much they eat through mindfulness. It’s guided by 10 principles, seen below. I’ve included my italicized text translation to try and simply explain some esoteric language seen in the terms.
- Reject the Diet Mentality
- Honor Your Hunger (aka eat when you’re hungry)
- Make Peace with Food (aka don’t demonize food groups)
- Challenge the Food Police (aka don’t let others tell you there are bad vs good foods)
- Discover the Satisfaction Factor
- Feel Your Fullness
- Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness (aka don’t emotionally eat)
- Respect Your Body (aka we are all different sizes, accept it.)
- Movement—Feel the Difference (aka Don’t focus on exercise just being a way to burn calories)
- Honor Your Health—Gentle Nutrition (aka Eat some healthy stuff, not all processed junk foods.. but also don’t get mad at yourself if you eat cake?)
The logical jump, that is made by both of these approaches, is that if you’re eating mindfully, then you will be less likely to overeat, make better choices, and in turn not eat a surplus of calories. If you’re eating in a caloric deficit, then you’ll lose weight. Which, when you examine the research on mindful eating, there was no statistically significant weight loss seen.
However, that doesn’t mean that these tools aren’t useful approaches in a healthy lifestyle. Weight loss is only one goal in a myriad of goals that can be related to food and our interface with it on a daily basis.
Stay tuned for part 2, where we will dive deeper into the practical approach of the concepts!
Coach Sarah, FNP-BC, MSN