Mindful eating a way to take more time in tackling obesity

Dr Heidi Douglass

An emerging new approach to our relationship with food is being championed by clinical psychologist Dr Heidi Douglass in new group sessions.

Dr Douglass worked as an obesity expert full time with the District Health Board for three years before starting her own practice.

"Mindful eating is about using all your senses when eating food. You stop, you sit and you look at what's there. There's none of this driving when eating or watching TV while you eat."

"You touch base with yourself before you start eating and rate your level of hunger. We teach people how to tap into that."

A lot of the people Dr Douglass sees are not able to tell when they are hungry.

"We have them put a number on how hungry they are, select something to eat and then use all their senses while they're eating and to go slow. They are tasting the food, smelling the food, paying attention to the textures, and they're doing all this with kindness and no judgment."

Half way through the exercise Dr Douglass will have them stop and re-evaluate their hunger.

"If you're still hungry keep eating, but if you're not then stop - you don't have to finish your plate."

According to Dr Douglass a lot of us have an ingrained belief that not finishing a plate is wasteful, but she said eating food your body is telling you it doesn't need is just another kind of waste.

"We use meditation as a key component. By itself meditation is not a religious activity. They all use it but they all use music too."

This process involved calming the "chattering mind" to notice inner thoughts and feelings.

"The more you do meditation the more you get access to these things," she said.

Attendees at the course will be treated to a session of tasting chocolate and chips. The aim is to teach people how to rely on their tastebuds, rather than their stomach, which can take 20 minutes to feed back information that it's full.

"Your tastebuds get tired and you'll notice a drop off with the enjoyment of food if you're doing it mindfully.

"They think it has evolutionary purposes. If early ancestors didn't have this system they would just stand at a peach tree all day eating peaches and that's it. They get tired and satiated with that taste so they might switch to walnuts, then that taste would fall off."

The consequences of negative self-labelling is also picked upon, which includes an unwillingness to try new things and how to reconnect with food in a positive way.

Dr Douglass said the programme was based on an American programme named the Mindfulness Based Eating Awareness Training, an evidence-based programme going since 1999 originally created for treatment of bulimia.

"It's very effective for binge eating, emotional eating, mindless eating, and it also helps some people to lose weight."

To find out more see www.mindfulnessworks.co.nz