Mindful Eating: How To Ditch Your Diet Forever!

If you want to lose weight, ditch the diet and re-learn how to eat. Mihika Pai is hungry for information.

- Mihika Pai

Diets set you up to fail. You have to eat what you don’t like, avoid what makes you happy and continually track this dismal equation of calories in and calories-out. Not only is this system hard to sustain, but after all that hard work you might still put on weight if you’re not getting the nutrition you need. There is a better way to manage your health, and it’s illustrated in neuroscientist Sandra Aamodt’s new book, Why Diets Make Us Fat: The Unintended Consequences Of Our Obsession With Weight Loss. Aamodt is a proponent of the ultimate anti-diet. If she had her way, we’d stop obsessing over ingredients, put down our gadgets and just eat, already.

Mindful or intuitive eating, as Aamodt defines it, is about being more aware of your needs at the table. This is not easy to do because it requires you to accept your feelings—and cravings—without judging them. The philosophy has its roots in Buddhist teaching, where concentrating on each morsel of food and its purpose is considered a form of meditation. This helps you sidestep the stress we’ve come to associate with eating and reduces the risk of overeating. Eventually, how you eat will be influenced by physical cues like hunger, and not emotional ones. At that point if occasionally your body wants to swap a double cheese pizza for a green salad, you can enjoy every last greasy bite and move on—no harm done, no penance required at the gym later.

DIETING YOUR WAY TO FAT