Dr Anu Gupta: Mindful Eating for Mindful Living

“The way a person does one thing, is the way they do everything.” – Anonymous

The solemn act of eating has been relegated to a chore in today’s busy world. A tedious but necessary task that is consciously – and fervently – only thought about when one is considering weight loss. Somewhere along the line we’ve stripped the act of eating off its ritual and mindfulness. And when we do so with such a fundamental activity, one that nourishes and sustains us, what does it say about our purity of attention in other areas of life? Eating mindfully then becomes a practice in mindfulness, which affects every aspect of our lives – including leadership.

As women leaders, our work and family life can be extremely demanding – leaving little time for self. Day-to-day emotions such as dissatisfaction, disappointment, apathy, boredom, guilt and anger can often pile up. Avoiding to deal with these feelings leads us to taking refuge in food. We reach out for food even when we are not hungry! Dr Anu Gupta – a weight-loss and emotional eating coach, nutrition expert, and radiologist – addresses the emotional and psychological components of eating. She shares with us five effective tools of mindful eating – not one of which has to do with a diet or exercise fad.

> (Gently) question your hunger: Ask yourself when you reach out for food if you are genuinely hungry. Are you just bored or feeling disinterested, maybe? Is the hunger just in your mind and hence, a distraction? Tune into your body and check if your hunger is not, in fact, a disguise for bypassing some difficult emotions. Remember that if hunger is not the real problem, food is not the answer.

> Inhabit your body: Bring mental awareness to what it feels like to be inside your body. One way to do that is to engage your senses while eating; take note of the sight, aroma, texture and taste of the food. As leaders, it’s normal to have a hundred things running through our heads while we eat but that’s the challenge – to consciously bring our awareness back to the act of eating.

> Enjoy the good feelings right now: People lose weight to feel a certain way – happy, confident, free of shame – not realising that those feelings are available to all of us right now! The secret that no one talks about is that only if we practise enjoying those feelings – of being happy or confident or free of shame – now, will we be able to recreate them and revel in them when we lose weight. Reverse the dynamic – don’t hold off feeling a certain way for when you reach your desired weight or size. Feel the feeling today!

> Speak kindly to yourself: This step is an absolute game changer! Women are, more often than not, mean when they talk to/about their body. We use demeaning names and deprecating tones to describe our body parts. We body bash! Be mindful of the vocabulary, tone and language you use to address your body. This is not about the semantics; it is about changing what we innately believe about our bodies.

 > Think of exercise as joyful play: Disconnect, right now, the relationship between weight loss and exercise. Exercising with the sole motive to lose weight or achieve a certain size is an idea that is doomed to fail – because it takes too long and people tend to give up. Let’s admit it, that goal alone makes exercising a drag. Instead, think of exercise as joyful play! Exercise to enrich your life, become more productive and to enjoy your body. This way you will actually look forward to exercising.

The ideas above are rooted in mindfulness – in pausing, in paying attention, in consciously changing how we view food, our body and our exercise regimes. Following those will not only have your body come back to its natural weight but will also make it glow with joy. Most importantly though, practising mindful eating will manifest into you practising a whole lot of daily activities with mindfulness. It will, guaranteed, spill over into your leadership style as well as in how you view your team, the challenges, the solutions and the results – it will shift your perspective on what truly matters.

Go on, try it.

About the Expert

Dr Anu Gupta is a weight loss and emotional eating coach, master NLP coach, a nutrition expert and a consultant radiologist (MBBS, DMRD, DNB trained). Her liberating approach to weight loss draws on cutting edge techniques from neuro-linguistics, psychology and cognitive behavioural therapy. She has helped busy professionals, working mothers, CEOs, and business owners take control of overeating and stress – and add more ease, success and joy to their health, work and lives.