“Mindless Eating”—Book review

Do you ever eat without thinking?

I do. But after reading Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, I’m thinking a little clearer.

I loved this book. While it’s not a diet book, following its strategies could help you lose weight. I’m not specifically trying to (although I wouldn’t complain if a few pounds just fell off!), but I know I don’t want to gain any.

And I do want to eat healthier.
Especially if I can do it without hassle.

And still enjoy God’s gift of food like I do now.

But before it happens mindlessly, it has to become mindful. Author Brian Wansink tells stories and gives examples. But he also sneaks in nine strategies at the end of the chapters to “reengineer” your eating habits, helping them become a new normal for you, without having to give them a lot of thought.

Here are a few of his strategies. Some are common, some not.

  Strategy 1. Think 20 Percent—More or Less
* Put 20% less food on your plate before you start eating because you typically won’t notice a 20% difference. (But 30%? You’d realize!)
* But for fruits and vegetables, give yourself 20% more.

  Strategy 2. See All You Eat
* Never eat out of the box or bag. (Oops!) Put your snack in a separate dish and leave the box in the kitchen.
* See it while you eat it—leave your discarded chicken wings or ribs visible to see how much you’ve eaten.

  Strategy 5. Create Distraction-Free Eating Scripts
* Rescript your diet danger zones (dinners, snacks, parties, restaurants, desks/dashboards). Be the last one to start eating; pace yourself with the slowest eater; serve triple helpings of healthy food and single servings of meat and potatoes.
* Distract yourself before you snack.

  Strategy 8. Crown Yourself the Official Gatekeeper
(This one guilted me.) For better or worse, the nutritional gatekeeper controls around 72% of what your family eats.
* Be a good marketer of healthy foods.
* Use the Half-Plate Rule. Half the plate should be vegetables and fruits and the other half should be protein and starch.
* Make serving sizes official. Do your own prepackaging in baggies.

Wansink provides much data from the experiments he performed for each strategy. It’s quite eye-opening to discover we eat more M&M’s when extra colors are available. That the bigger the package we pour from, the more we’ll give ourselves. And that we so easily accept and eat what others deem is a serving.

But he also points out information alone isn’t enough. Don’t we all know by now what is healthy eating and what’s not? We have to mindfully set ourselves up for better mindless eating through small changes.

One mindless change I’ve made is keeping a container of pre-washed baby carrots in the fridge (yes, this is a new habit for me—you’ve probably been doing it for years!). Because they’re now convenient, I’m grabbing a few whenever I want to snack instead of my typical chips or crackers.

Another change (lest my carrot example mislead you into thinking I’m eating all healthy now) is I set out my serving size of malted milk balls on a napkin and put the box up, instead of mindlessly eating them one at a time out of the box until it’s surprisingly emptied. 

Wansink encourages well with these words:

Eating right is a great goal. The problem is that it’s just too daunting for most of us. It seems so absolute and so joyless.

But the idea of eating better is do-able. While eating right is a long-term goal, eating better is something we can start today.

This book was a fun read. And it made me think twice about a lot of things. But most importantly, it’s already influencing me to change some behaviors. Mindlessly and otherwise.

* * *

Here’s a mindless eating quiz. I wasn’t brave enough to take it, but maybe you will be. And let me know your results. {smile}

What small changes have you made through the years to eat healthier?