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Mindful Eating Group - Niagara North Family Health Team
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Niagara North > Patient Resources > Mindful Eating Group

Mindful Eating Group Resources

THANK YOU FOR REGISTERING FOR THE MINDFUL EATING PROGRAM.

PLEASE DOWNLOAD THE CLASS HANDOUTS BELOW. THE PASSWORD TO ACCESS THE HANDOUTS WAS INCLUDED IN YOUR ZOOM CONFIRMATION EMAIL. PLEASE CONTACT THE CLINIC IF YOU DID NOT RECEIVE THE CONFIRMATION EMAIL

  • Download our Zoom Troubleshooting Tip Sheet.
    We recommend to review this in advance of the start date of the group to ensure you have downloaded the most recent version of Zoom and can familiarize yourself with the platform. 

Week 1:

Weekly Challenges:

  • Practice using the 3 steps to problem solving for a problem you are currently facing in your life
  • Try abdominal breathing at home
  • Determine your 3 core health values
  • Work on your SMART (ER) goal

Use the documentation form below to record your weekly challenge information:

Week 2:

 
Avoid Dieting:

Check out this 12 minute video by Sandra Aamodt, a Neuroscientist who explains the science behind dieting and weight loss:

 
Movement Ideas:
 
Sleep Resources:
 
Self Compassion Resources
 
Self Care Check List

Weekly Challenges:

  • How will you practice self-kindness?
  • What are 3 areas of self care you would like to work on?  Try using the self care checklist
  • What self-nurturing activity will you do this week? Practice “3 things”
  • Continue to create and work on SMART(ER) goals

Use the documentation form below to record your weekly challenge information:

Week 3

Want to Learn more?
 Mindfulness Training
Specifically Mindful Eating Apps

These Apps are geared toward mindful eating but do have a fee.

  • Aim I hungry?
  • Mindful Eating tracker (iphone)
  • In the Moment (iphone)
Weekly Challenges:
  • Be aware of environmental eating triggers
  • Internal vs external triggers
  • Aim I hungry? Or Do I have the BLAHS?
  • Practice body scan
  • Practice mindful eating
  • Journal for awareness
  • Set a SMART(ER) goal

Use the documentation form below to record your weekly challenge information:

Weekly Challenge Documentation Form

Week 4:

Resources

Body Scan Exercises on YouTube:

Want to Learn More?

Weekly Challenges:

  • Continue to journal and practice mindful eating
  • Choose one way to re-engineer your food environment in order to reduce eating triggers
  • Continue to practice self-care and self-compassion
  • Use STOP to help manage food cravings
  • Practice using positive self talk
  • Practice using positive self affirmations
  • Try naming your emotion
  • Write a SMART(ER) goal

Use the documentation form below to record your weekly challenge information:

Week 5:

Journaling:

Writing down thoughts and feelings about a problem or stressful situation can help to reduce negative emotions.

Some questions that might be helpful;

  • What connections do I notice between my thoughts, feelings and behaviours?
  • How have my behaviours changed?
  • How have my feelings changed?
  • What has been my experience with trying a new CBT strategy?
  • What am I noticing?
  • What is coming up for me right now?

Avoid All or Nothing Thinking:

Often when it comes to food people can get caught up in all or nothing thinking.  We label food as being good or bad.  We see ourselves as being good or bad for eating this food. We need to eat food on a daily basis and it is unrealistic to expect that anyone can eat perfect 100% of the time.  
What is a perfect diet anyway?  What works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for another.

Questions to Ask Yourself:

What happens when we label a food as bad?
What happens when we eat a food that we’ve labeled as bad?

Re-frame your thoughts.  Remember foods for the body and foods for the soul.  Balanced thoughts, listening to our bodies and giving ourselves permission will help us to develop a healthy relationship with food.

Distraction:

We often use food to distract us when we are feeling stressed or having uncomfortable feelings.
What if we use distration as an intentional tool to reduce emotional eating due to food cravings.

Behavioural Distraction:

Switch up what you are doing!
Something easy to engage in that you don’t associate with eating.
Examples:

  • Go for a walk
  • Switch over the laundry
  • Take a hot bath
  • brush your teeth
  • Deep breathing or yoga
  • knit or do a puzzle

Thought Distraction

Examples:

  • Counting backwards in increments of 7 from 100
  • recite the alphabet backwards
  • use the alphabet to recall names of flowers, countires etc.
  • Try to remember numbers of the players on a sport’s team
Visualization:

Can distract but also reduce stress
Examples:

  • relaxing on the beach,
  • walking through a forest

Engage all of your senses!

VISUALIZATION VIDEOS:
Break the Thought Cycle with Visualization:

Use STOP to change your thoughts.
Instead of blocking the food craving out, be curious about it.
Picture a big STOP sign.
Visualize yourself tossing or kicking the thought away.
See your trigger thoughts as words and being erased in the sand by the sea
on a chalkboard being erased.

Delay your craving.
Food cravings are brief and temporary, they tend to come on strong but slowly dissipate.
Create space between the food craving and your automatic response of eating.
It is not about avoiding the food craving, you can give yourself permission to enjoy mindfully but it is about creating time to be curious about it, to make a choice and use a CBT strategy.

Weekly Challenges:

  • Continue to Journal

  • Practice mindful eating

  • Notice when you are using all or nothing thinking

  • Use STOP

  • Practice: distraction, visualization, delaying the craving

  • Try progressive muscle relaxation

Try Progressive Muscle Relaxation:

Use the documentation form below to record your weekly challenge information:

Week 6:

  • Download our Mindful Eating Participant Workbook
  • Reminder to please complete the program evaluation (survey sent via e-mail).

     

  • You may also choose to complete the Pre/Post self-compassion survey again to see if you have made changes.

Weekly Challenges:

  • Remember Lapses are normal, be aware, practice problem solving and postive self talk to get back on track.
  • Be assertive!  It becomes easier with time and practice.
Gratitude:
  • Helpful tips for practicing gratitude
  • Try practicing at the same time each day- during morning cup of coffee or in shower or before a meal
  • Use a reminder-physical reminder such as a gratitude stone that you put in the shower or carry in your pocket
  • Gratitude journal
  • Gratitude APP: Happyfeed is a free app that you can use to write down 3 things that you are grateful for each day, you can also add pictures, you can set reminders to complete.

Thank you for taking part in the Mindful Eating Program!