The hustle and bustle of our modern time lends no favour to self care – and eating is on that list. I think we can all agree that eating is an essential form of self care. Considering that eating is essential, and enjoyable, I am in awe that eating is often described as a burden or annoyance to daily life. An annoyance because it pulls us away from our work and lowers our productivity for 15-30min at a time. It’s a complete flip from our ancestors deep appreciation and gratitude towards food – food was sacred to them. The act of eating is a restful and healing activity – you can’t regenerate damaged tissue without nutrition. Further than that though, from a neuro-immunological standpoint, our bodies natural relationship with the act of eating is to manifest rest, rejuvenation, and healing – let me tell you why.
Why focus on mindful eating? Well, it is probably one of the few activities you have complete control over. Even if you don't have time set aside for it, you know you can likely afford 20minutes to walk away from your desk to eat and no one would judge you for it.
How mindful eating can help prevent burn out
When our “caveman brain” feels safe, this is an especially restful activity, the scientific theory for this is called polyvagal theory. Polyvagal theory is the theory that our brains top priority is to keep you safe and therefore, it’s top priority is to seek out safety and threats. Having food, especially in abundance, is the most fundamental way our bodies feel safe. When our brain perceives safety via mind body communication, we can then enter into what’s called “parasympathetic” activity or the rest, digest and repair mode. This is also the system that is involved with healing. So eating signals to our brain that we are safe which stimulates peace, and healing through our amygdala or our “caveman brain”. When food does not signal safety is often in the context of anorexia or disordered eating, and simplistically is rooted in the belief that food = weight gain or unhealthy additive = decreased value as a human or illness = danger.
Mindful eating positively benefits our health by strengthening our rest and digest system or parasympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for repairing our bodies, which is incredibly important for preventing burn out! There is strong evidence to show that mindfulness practices reduces workplace burn out (1). Mindful eating is a powerhouse when it comes to mindfulness practice because of the safety mechanism I described above.
There is strong evidence to show that mindfulness practices reduces workplace burn out (1)
By allowing time and space to focus on our hunger, fullness cues, flavour and smell senses, while eating, we are telling our caveman brain that we are safe. This body mind communication that we have food and are therefore safe communicates a green light to repair, digest, and heal. Mindful eating activates the “rest and digest” or parasympathetic nervous system and strengthens it. These two systems, rest and digest vs. fight or flight, are like muscles! They can become toned and more dominated one way or another. Whereas in our culture, our “fight or flight” mode tends to be much more robust than our rest and digest mode.
This body-mind connection gets cut off when we are distracted, and therefore our bodies ability to enter into rest and repair is blunted. Did you know that multitasking is actually a myth? Our brains can only monotask and switch from one task to another in quick succession.
A crucial piece to understand is that screens are extremely stimulating aka not relaxing. So eating while on your phone or tablet blunts our brains ability to enter into rest and digest, blocking our bodies ability to rejuvenate itself. Of course, it will still rejuvenate while sleeping and at other down times, but how much down time do you get in the day? Lunch breaks are some of the only controllable parts of your work day and so important that they are protected by law.
What is burn out?
Work related burn out is sadly, not in the DSM-5 and therefore not an official illness, but it is all too real. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) “Burn-out is included in the 11th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) as an occupational phenomenon. It is not classified as a medical condition”. How can something be classified as a disease, but only deemed an occupational phenomenon? I wonder why … I’m looking at you insurance companies (WCB) and duty to accommodate. Sadly, there are a lot of conditions that get glossed over because it favours businesses or insurance companies financially and negates them needing to care for their employees, but I digress.
According to the ICD-11, burn out is characterized as:
- “feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion;
- increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job; and
- reduced professional efficacy.” (2)
The WHO then states burn out is solely in the context of work, however, we know that there are other environments that can cause burn out, like caregiver or parental burn out.
Overall, burn out is a state of energy depletion or exhaustion. Burn out has a cousin – Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or Myelgic Encephalitis which is burn out times a million with very limited options for recovery. When burn out becomes chronic, and there is bodily pain, exercise intolerance and post exercise fatigue then it is Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or Myelgic Encephylitis which is a recognized diagnosis (however not widely), and extremely debilitating.
To paraphrase what is happening, the body feels stressed and not safe for a very long period of time and says “STOP!” and shuts itself down. The feeling of not being safe is critical to understand from a neuroimmunological stand point and is the core of polyvagal theory. Polyvagal theory says that our brains primary objective in life is to keep us safe and avoid dangers. I think of burn out like the body trying to protect itself from the stress of the environment you are in. Your brain is no longer trusting you to manage your own safety and so it initiates it’s own course correction. I’m not saying it’s a good solution though because it leaves a lot of people in very difficult situations without recourse.
What is mindful eating?
Mindful eating is the act of being present and aware of the food you are eating and how your body feels before, during and after your meal. Our mind-body connection is the signals our body sends to our brain to indicate if it is safe or in danger, thus hedging some of the above mechanism for burn out (1). This connection influences our immunology and health – this is a new field of study called neuroimmunology
A great example of mindful eating might be when you go out to eat at a fancy restaurant with no screens and you savour your meal with no distractions. The opposite is mindless or distracted eating like eating while working, while driving or on screens. For example, when I accidentally ate moldy bread because I wasn’t paying attention to what I was eating! Gross!
A few good questions to ask yourself to gage how mindful you are eating are:
How often do I mono or multi task when we eat?
Do I remember what my last meal tasted like?
Do I remember what I ate last night?
How to mindfully eat
Mindful eating can be summed up in a few simple steps: pay attention to your food, eat slowly and notice bodily sensations throughout your meal like hunger, fullness and taste. Avoid eating distracted or while on your phone, which blunts our brains ability to receive communication from our body that we are safe and have food. Here are some of the most common aspects of mindful eating:
- Considers the source of food, preparation method, and who prepared it
- Recognizes hunger and environmental cues that influence eating
- Observes food appearance, taste, smell, and bodily sensations while eating
- Acknowledges how the meal made us feel and fullness levels
- Expresses gratitude for the meal
- May incorporate prayer, deep breathing or meditation pre or post-meal
To make it more specific, these are the steps you can follow:
- Pause before you start eating. Smell and look at your food. Take a deep breath, and notice any hunger sensations you may have.
- Eat slowly and notice how your food tastes. You can even pause and put your fork and knife down halfway through your meal to do another body scan for hunger/fullness cues.
- Notice throughout your meal how your body feels – hunger and fullness.
- Stop eating when you are 80% full. The reason for this is because it takes your stomach 20minutes to tell your brain you have eaten. So if you stop at 80% fullness, in 20 minutes you will feel 100% full.
- Pause and notice how your body feels again – hunger, fullness, do you feel better or worse after eating that meal?
- Practice a few deep breaths to activate rest and repair. Rest after you eat for 10-15 minutes.
If you feel you could benefit from the benefits of mindfulness, and specifically mindful eating book a free meet n' greet with me, Chelsea Verbeek, RD. A registered dietitian can guide and support you from a nutritional sense on your journey to recovery and finding energy and balance.
1. Systematic Review of Mindfulness Practice for Reducing Job Burnout - PMC (nih.gov)
2. Burn-out an "occupational phenomenon": International Classification of Diseases (who.int)
