Want to Eat More Healthily? Listen to Your Hunger.

In the third part of this month’s series, Pete Wells and experts say that healthy eating starts with understanding what drives your eating, and slowing down.

Reset your Appetite This is the third of four episodes by Pete Wells, coming out every Monday in January, about how he developed healthy eating habits. First of all focusing on reducing sugar consumption, and the second one in stocking the home with proper food.

Once I decided to eat better, I became curious about using behavioral science to help change my habits. It wasn’t long before I heard about mindful eating, a method based on Buddhist practice that tries to correct imbalances in our diet through calm mindfulness.

And when you read about mindful eating, sooner or later you find out about Raisin meditation. Educated at Harvard, Brown, Duke and other schools. Diet books recommend it. A number of YouTube videos show it.

In the Raisin Meditation, you eat one grape a little more slowly and deliberately than you thought possible. First, you look at the dried vine – really look, take in its shape, its size, its color and its creases. Then, hold the raisin to your nose and notice how it smells. Now, you put the raisin in your mouth to investigate how it feels, testing it with your tongue and palate.

Once your mouth has become familiar with the raisin, you may take just one bite. Stop by and check out how this has changed things. At this point, you can chew the raisin and finally swallow it, paying close attention to all the accompanying sensations and the aftertaste, even the bits of raisin skin that stick to your teeth.

After 12 years as restaurant critic at The Times, I thought I was an old hand at methodological sensory analysis. But there’s more to Raisin meditation than motion-chewing. In the exercise version of the book “Mindful Eating” by Dr. Jan Chozen Bays, you are asked to listen to one of the seven types of hunger: “eye hunger” when you look at a raisin, “stomach hunger” when you are finally allowed to swallow it, “cell hunger,” that message your body sometimes sends when it needs to eat differently when it is cold – say, according to cold weather.

Reading this for the first time, I thought: Hunger? What does hunger have to do with it?

When I was reviewing restaurants, I didn’t think about how much food my body needed. All that mattered was that I was ready when the next meal came. When I thought about my food, I think I saw it as a useful workplace tool, like an office espresso maker: It made work easier and more enjoyable, but I could live without it if I had to. I wouldn’t let something as basic as my body tell me what to eat, where or when, let alone how much.

My encounter with healthy eating helped me listen to my appetite again. I ignored it for so long that I was in a state of constant hunger. But my appetite never stopped talking to me, and it had some useful information to pass on.

Turn down the volume

Entire industries are dedicated to suppressing the signals our bodies send to tell us what we need to eat.

Chip packages are designed in bright colors that we can see in every supermarket. Poultry chickens are made to be desired. TikTok and other forms of food media are seeding our brains with life-changing thoughts of chocolate strawberries from Dubai. I completely understand why many people rely on GLP-1 medications to quiet food cravings; the surrounding discussion from all these sources can be confusing.

Sound is very good at confusing us because our body’s signals come in different forms. There is physical hunger, a strong sense that it is time for a big meal. But there are deceivers, too, feelings dressed as needs. There is bored hunger, sad hunger, anxious hunger and (my specialty) hunger in the service of procrastination.

Some of them manifest as unexpected, uncontrollable urges. They are intense and often frustrating, like a toddler throwing noise into my skull. After arguing with the toddler for a while, I couldn’t help but stop it. A donut is a small price to pay. So is a box of donuts, if that’s what it takes.

The way to determine which of these hungers is at the door is simple: Listen. My body’s demand for whole foods doesn’t sound like a baby’s demand for donuts.

Sometimes, it’s enough to simply acknowledge the craving and let it out. But often, fake hunger is mixed with a shot or two of real hunger. By listening, and with a certain amount of trial and error, I began to learn when the desire can be bought with olives or pickles (rare, but it happens), when the situation called for a big bowl of popcorn (every afternoon, almost) and when it’s time to stop everything and just make dinner.

Mealtime will come eventually, and it’s better to be early than late. When we wait for a heavy, irrational hunger to rear its head, we tend to feed ourselves with speed and violence that we would find irrational in a coyote. Study after study has found that the faster we eat, the more we eat.

Reduce Distractions

When Dr. Bays teaches the ideas he presents in “Mindful Eating,” suggesting that you eat one meal at a time. Or, as he sometimes calls this process, Put Down That Fork.

“This is difficult at first, but you take one bite and put down your dinner plate,” said Dr. Bays. “And then you feel that bite until it is chewed and swallowed.

Not only does this help you eat less, but, he said, “it makes eating more enjoyable, when it’s enjoyable, the feeling of satisfaction comes sooner.”

Focus is the main principle of mindfulness.

“Don’t eat while you’re doing something else,” says Lisa R. Young, an assistant professor of nutrition at New York University whose diet advice book “Finally Full, Finally Slim” draws heavily on the mindful eating school of thought.

Dr. Young tells students not to eat while standing, watching television or working. (He calls this “eating al desko.”) Instead, he suggests chewing carefully and listening to all your senses.

Certain dishes force me to shift to a lower gear. Chewing on a raw carrot takes about as much time as reading the chapter “Gravity’s Rainbow.” Most salads are slow food, especially if all the parts are chopped or chopped or cut into different shapes and sizes. I can read while chopping radishes, scallions, cucumbers and hard-boiled eggs for a mixed salad based on Thai yum yai. The trance doesn’t end completely when I bring the dish to the table, either.

Taking time to eat is one of the ways to prepare for the situation in the air before sitting down. Another useful method, and this was surprising, is exercise.

I walk about an hour a day, usually in the morning. Whether this helped me lose weight, I don’t know, but I’m sure it eased my mind. When I come back from a trip, I can feel the blood rushing from the lymph nodes in my body to my brain. At least, it feels that way. Certainly, I make more rational decisions about breakfast on days when I’m hiking.

Yes, there are days when my travels take me to a local bakery that makes the best cinnamon buns. But when I eat that cinnamon bun, I promise, I do it carefully.

Mindful Eating Recipes

Mushroom and Tofu Sticky Rice | Smoky Eggplant Dip | Cold Soba Noodles with Dipping Sauce | White Bean Dip with Cumin Chile Oil | One-Pot Sesame Salmon and Quinoa | Chicken Noodle Soup | Spicy Peanut Stew With Ginger And Tomatoes | Red Curry Mussels and Roasted Sweet Potatoes | See all the recipes for this series

More from this thread

Follow up New York Times Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok again Pinterest. Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice.