Distracted Eating: Are You Listening?

Have you ever been on the phone with someone and you can tell they’re not actually listening—the conversation skips a beat while they read or respond to a text. You’ve just confided something, you need a little love and you’re waiting for a response, they say ‘uh-huh’. It’s not what you were hoping for but you don’t say anything because that might make you look needy or vulnerable. Or maybe you don’t even think you deserve their undivided attention because they’re busy and your needs aren’t that important.

Not paying attention when you’re eating is a version of that phone call—something is asking you to listen but your focus is elsewhere, you say ‘uh-huh’ and keep eating.

Distracted eating is woven into our culture. We eat at our desks while we work, while we read or watch TV, while we drive or walk, we eat while we’re on the phone not paying full attention to the person we’re talking to or the food we’re eating.

You might guess that with the pandemic slowing down the days for most of us that we would be more present when we eat, but what I hear is the TV is on more than ever, and we’ve come up with new ways to distract like eating while on Facebook, or home schooling, or Zooming, or folding laundry.

Distracted eating is a habit and if you’re an overeater it can also be a clue to what leads to your overeating: emotions you don’t want to feel, and you can be sure they’re not the good ones like joy or love or connection. They tend to be the challenging ones like being worried, scared, sad, angry, lonely, anxious, disgusted, guilty, shamed, betrayed, adrift, there are so many possibilities.

The other day a friend told me that her house had flooded. A faucet had broken off and it took some time before they were finally able to turn the water off at the source (due to a frozen turn thingie). There wasn’t that much water in the house and they set about cleaning up the visible damage, crisis over. The next day she noticed the ceiling bucking in one room, then another and another. It turned out there wasn’t that much water in the house because inside the walls the dry wall and insulation were soaking it all up. In the end most of her floors, several walls and ceilings all had to be ripped up. Major damage.

Distracted eaters have been shown to eat more, feel less full, not remember what they ate, and snack more.

Whatever it is that you’re distracting yourself from with food needs your attention, it needs to be heard. Avoiding it is like turning off the faucet without checking inside the walls to see what’s going on. It may seem easier in the moment but the damage accumulates.

When you go inside and look for the source of the leak, or in this case the emotion, you begin to address what it is you’re trying to avoid. This is the sustainable, meaningful work of the Intuitive Eating process. Most people would rather eat or even do laundry than look inside their walls, but when you do you begin to heal your relationship with food from the inside out.

It’s not easy, being present takes courage, commitment and love, and the results are worth every bit of effort.

To learn more about Intuitive Eating click here.