In this episode of Simple Shifts: Conversations on Food, Life, Weight and Mindset, Martha and Peter delve into the themes of Mindless Eating, comfort food, and sustainable eating habits. They explore how personal experiences and societal influences shape our relationship with food, particularly focusing on the psychological aspects of eating and the importance of mindful choices. The discussion also highlights the significance of early food preferences in children and introduces practical strategies like the half plate rule to promote healthier eating habits.
Key Takeaways
- Mindless eating can lead to significant shifts in one’s relationship with food.
- Comfort foods vary greatly between individuals and are influenced by gender.
- Happiness can lead to healthier comfort food choices.
- Children develop food preferences very early in life.
- Positive language around food can influence children’s eating habits.
- The half plate rule simplifies healthy eating without calorie counting.
- Re-engineering your environment can support healthier eating choices.
- Out of sight, out of mind can help reduce mindless snacking.
- Mindless eating often occurs due to reflex actions rather than hunger.
- Small, sustainable changes can lead to significant weight loss over time.
Mindless Eating Chapters 7 and 8 Podcast
Video Transcript
Martha McKinnon (00:00)
Hi, welcome to Simple Shifts: Conversations on Food, Life, Weight and Mindset. I’m Martha McKinnon from Simple Nourished Living and this is my brother and partner, Peter Morrison. Hi everyone. So today we’re continuing our conversation, kind of our deep dive into the book Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, by Brian Wansink.
Peter Morrison (00:12)
Hi there. Hello.
Martha McKinnon (00:22)
But before we dive in, here’s the question. What’s new and good in your world?
Peter Morrison (00:30)
What’s new and good? This is podcast episode number 18. So I’m proud to say that we’re moving forward and we’re not gonna give up anytime soon.
Martha McKinnon (00:47)
It’s our stick-to-itiveness that’s gotten us this far, right? Yeah. Yeah. So we’re going to stick with it for now.
Peter Morrison (00:50)
Mm-hmm.
Martha McKinnon (00:57)
And stick with our conversation about Mindless Eating because mindless eating was just one of those books that was just one of those aha moments for me over 15 years ago now which seems hard to believe and it was just reading that book that just caused a light bulb to go off in my mind and it started a real shift in my relationship with food and weight and it just took off such a burden that I had been carrying and thinking that I was somehow broken, that I didn’t have the right willpower.
And reading this book helped me to see the weight loss, the challenges of weight and healthy eating in a whole new light. And so I’m really excited to continue our conversations. We have several podcasts already. We’re in the middle of the book now. Today we’re going to be talking about chapters seven and eight, where we’re going to be taking a deeper look at comfort food and what else are we going to talk about beyond comfort food?
Martha McKinnon (01:59)
Personalities. Yeah, the fact that we, that different personalities relate to food differently and like different foods. I found that very interesting. Some of the issues around kids and when their preferences start, some of the, and what else? Anything else? Let me check my notes here.
Peter Morrison (02:12)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. The Half Plate Rule.
Martha McKinnon (02:22)
Yes, the half plate rule, I think is very, very helpful. It’s a much easier way, I think, than trying to count calories or points, you know, if you just sort of adopt the half plate rule. So shall we start with comfort food?
Peter Morrison (02:36)
Comfort foods. I was most struck by how he, he didn’t really define comfort foods, but how we all define comfort foods differently.
Martha Mckinnon (02:38)
Right. And so, and I think there’s a lot of myths and misnomers about comfort foods, what he learned from all of his studies and research in working with real people in real time versus what we kind of think about comfort food. What do you think when you think comfort food? I mean, what foods do you automatically associate with comfort food?
Peter Morrison (03:10)
I interestingly, or not interestingly enough, sort of fell in line with how he differentiates in the book between how women and men interpret comfort food differently. And I really fell in line with the male perspective, not so much from ice cream, but creamy cozy soups and pizzas and pastas and casseroles and mashed potatoes and gravy to me, that’s comfort food.
Martha McKinnon (03:37)
Right. So that’s how you would define comfort food personally. And that’s what the science or their research validated, that men tend to prefer meatloaf even pot roast and macaroni and cheese. So men tend to associate comfort foods with being taken care of and you know, probably food that mom made them or grandma made them. And so they’re seeing it through that perspective.
Peter Morrison (03:39)
Yeah. Yes. Mm-hmm. Right.
Martha McKinnon (04:06)
You know, being taken care of, where women tend to gravitate and sort of associate comfort foods with more snacky items, the things that are easy, like, cookies and sweets and chocolate. And again, because, you know, traditionally, the responsibility for shopping and cooking tends to fall more on women. And so it kind of makes sense that in their mind to be comforted would be to be something just easy.
Peter Morrison (04:20)
Mm-hmm.
Martha McKinnon (04:34)
For many women it’s about convenience, it doesn’t take a lot of work, you know, just open, open the package. So that was an interesting find. And then a lot of us think too, that comfort food, we turn to comfort food when we’re sad, or depressed, or for those kinds of reasons. But the research showed just the opposite, that we tend to reach out for our comfort foods in times of celebration, when we’re feeling like we deserve it.
When we’re feeling happy, good, when we’re celebrating. So that was something that I think was sort of a myth that got sort of broken.
Peter Morrison (05:11)
Also, I found it interesting how when you’re happier, the comfort foods tended to be more pizzas, steak.
Peter Morrison (05:24)
Those types of foods when you’re sad, you tended to go for the cookies, the potato chips.
Martha Mckinnon (05:29)
Right. So your choices become sort of healthier, the happier you are. And I am a big proponent of get happy, you know, focus on your happiness before you undertake the work that’s involved in losing weight. That it’s a lot easier when you’re in really good state of mind and that sort of plays out that when you’re feeling good, when you’re happy, that choices get easier.
Martha McKinnon (05:58)
So he had some advice around comfort foods in terms of trying to settle. Our preferences are often set early, right? Because we associate them with homecoming, family, having your needs met and that they can change over time too. They’re not locked in. A comfort food that you loved as a kid could shift as you age.
Then the other thing I found interesting was his talk around the fact that in order for the comfort food to be satisfying, it really had to tap into your expectation. It had to taste and look like you remembered it from your past. And have you ever had that happen where you have this fond memory of a food, you associate it with comfort, and then you’re offered it and it doesn’t taste like it doesn’t taste the way you remember? Have you ever had that happen?
Peter Morrison (06:53)
Probably nothing’s coming to mind, but I do remember in the book he mentioned, I think it was meatloaf. It was prepared in a big baking dish. Well, that’s not, mom used to make it in an eight by five loaf pan or something.
Martha McKinnon (06:55)
Right. So suddenly it’s like, right. And so that happens a lot, I think, in new relationships, right? Where somebody had a favorite food, a comfort food, maybe that mom made growing up. And then a girlfriend, a spouse tries to, you know, what’s your favorite food? Meatloaf. And, and somebody makes you meatloaf. And it’s like, but, that’s not the right meatloaf. That’s not the way I remember it.
Peter Morrison (07:15)
Mm.
Martha McKinnon (07:34)
So it’s not going to satisfy you because you had an expectation, you had a vision, a taste in your mind. And that’s when the search for that perfect recipe starts, right? Going back through your files. That happens, you know, periodically, we have a few recipes on our site that date back to recipes from old Maine cookbooks, you know, that mom had made through the years. And every once in a while, there’ll be a comment shared to say, that’s the recipe that I’ve been looking for, you know, for eons because it just evokes childhood somehow.
Peter Morrison (08:04)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Yeah, the Lemon Supreme Pound Cake comes to mind. I know we’ve had several comments on that one. I think that’s an old time classic back of the box type recipe.
Martha Mckinnon (08:15)
Yep, yep, we’ve had that and with the goulash too, like mom’s, because mom’s goulash is an old recipe that she learned to make just as a child, you know, as a teenager, as an adolescent. And yeah, so we’ve had some similar comments on that recipe as well. So yeah, the power of the food memory.
Peter Morrison (08:23)
Yes, yes.
Martha McKinnon (08:44)
So the suggestion was made in terms of celebratory situations. It’s fun to try to play with making your celebratory foods a little healthier. Instead of thinking you need to satisfy yourself with a gooey hot fudge sundae, maybe start playing with you know introducing strawberries with a little bit of ice cream and trying to gradually shift what you think of as your celebratory foods or your comfort foods and that’s something that can be you know effective over time.
Peter Morrison (09:14)
Mmm.
Martha McKinnon (09:25)
Anything else about comfort food? So we’d love to have you guys share in the comments. If you’re reading and following along, we’d love to get some of your thoughts and experiences with the comfort foods that you love best and or how comfort food plays into challenges around weight loss for you.
Peter Morrison (09:28)
Where do you go when you feel like you’re craving something comforting?
Martha McKinnon (09:51)
I fall in line to with what a typical woman would choose, you know like potato chips is the number one and potato chips for me are are a food that I turn to, but interestingly enough I am it to that point where it is more and you know celebratory manner less than when I’m feeling down. I think I turn to food much less when I’m feeling down then then I might have in the past.
I think that’s just something that through lots of time and practice and now I have a yoga mat that I love and so sometimes when I’m feeling stressed or down, I know to get on get on my yoga mat and it does it’s magic – I call it my magic carpet and it really can make me feel better and there’s no guilt you know when you get off your yoga mat. You’ve really scored because you do feel better and you know you didn’t go down a negative trail.
Peter Morrison (10:51)
So chapter eight gets into more like with children and kids and what they like, how they start learning what they like and don’t like before they turn four months old.
Martha Mckinnon (10:54)
Yeah, isn’t that wild? Yeah, so those food preferences start really young, what they like, what they don’t like, and they’re observing and taking in the activities, what they’re observing, right?
Peter Morrison (11:15)
Mm-hmm.
And just the behavior of adults, right? Just how they were serving it. If the adults served it and said something positive, it was received in a positive way.
Martha McKinnon (11:29)
Right.
Yeah, so that languaging becomes really important when you’re trying to introduce, foods and healthy foods to kids to say, these carrots are going to make your eyesight better. You know, just like the spinach is going to make you stronger. And when you can start to create those positive relationships, kids absorb it and they take it in. And so the the languaging, the relationship you have with food and the languaging that you’re using is going to be really important as you’re raising kids.
I read a fascinating book on this topic and it was called French Kids Eat Everything and it took a deep dive. It was written by a Canadian woman. She and her husband, I think her husband was a college professor, so they had the opportunity to do a year-long sabbatical in a village in France and they had two young daughters and they ended up in a village with a lot of his family, so aunts and uncles and cousins.
The food cultures were so different between Canada and say United States and Canada are probably very similar to what she experienced in France. She ended up turning it into a book in terms of so many differences in the way that foods are just introduced in France. The way the French work with their children.
They start to really introduced those rules as we’re talking in a really young age. And it’s just if you’re interested in that the book is called French Kids Eat Everything. And it was fascinating. You know, one story she remembered she was at the grocery store one day and her daughter was upset and she said here have a cookie. And then she was kind of reprimanded in the store to say no no no no no no you shouldn’t be doing that to your young child, you’re setting them up to associate having to be comforted with this food. But that’s not the point of food you know, you’re supposed to be eating at set times and that’s just one example of many about the vast differences in how the French relate to food versus how we do in in North America.
So yeah, so kids, I mean, more around the kid thing, it was like, the other thing that was interesting was how early our natural hunger and full signals start to go away, right? Because the study said, what, at three, if you feed a child too much, they’re going to stop when they know they’ve had enough. But by the time they’re five, they’re starting to adopt the behaviors where…
Peter Morrison (14:11)
Mm-hmm.
Martha McKinnon (14:18)
how much they eat is related to how much they’re served. So they’re already starting to lose that natural connection to their own satisfied signal.
Peter Morrison (14:29)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, if they’re given a lot by the time they turn five, if they’re given a lot, they’ll eat a lot. Simple enough.
Martha McKinnon (14:38)
Yeah, so they’re already becoming disconnected from themselves and they’re acting more like us adults already.
Peter Morrison (14:45)
Mm-hmm. So to get more balanced meals, he talks a lot about the half plate rule.
Martha McKinnon (14:57)
Yeah, which makes a lot of sense, right? I mean, it’s such an easy approach. You’re going to get a lot of variety that way. So your nutrition is going to be improved and it’s just going to be a natural way to limit your calories in a way that feels normal. So the suggestion is to fill half your plate with veggies and or fruit, right? Some combination and then the other half with your protein and starch.
And it’s just a natural way of eating because the fruits and veggies are going to naturally
have more volume and a lot of nutrient density but not a lot of energy density so lower calories for more nutrition. It’s just a natural way to shift the number of calories you’re taking in in a way that doesn’t feel I don’t know doesn’t it doesn’t feel hard right? It doesn’t feel overwhelming it doesn’t feel like you’re depriving yourself because you still have this big full plate of food.
Peter Morrison (15:52)
And you could be less, like you were saying, you could be less careful about the actual calories.
Martha McKinnon (16:01)
Ultimately what Brian Wansink put forth in this book is that trying to count calories is very, hard because he did a lot of studies that said even nutritionists are bad at it. He had a lot of examples where even people who are experienced, it’s a very, very hard thing to do.
Peter Morrison (16:09)
Right.
Martha McKinnon (16:28)
So if you can find ways to just naturally take in fewer calories, you’re going to be much more successful than trying to micromanage because there’s just too many ways you can go wrong with that.
Peter Morrison (16:33)
Mm-hmm. And that’s where also re-engineering your environment will help.
Martha McKinnon (16:39)
Yeah, I mean, and I really I embraced this. I took this to heart and my environment has shifted immensely and it’s an environment that just works. I mean, because it takes away it just it’s like, why wouldn’t you when you think about it? Why wouldn’t you want to set up an environment that supports you versus works against you? It’s just a much kinder approach to life.
Peter Morrison (17:03)
Mm-hmm.
Martha McKinnon (17:07)
And you have to think about all the environments that you might have to consider. So do you remember some of the environments he talked about? Of course, your home, your kitchen. But he talked about your desk, depending on where you’re working. Your car, if you have a tendency to eat in the car, you’d have to think about that environment. Whatever the environments in which you do a lot of eating, you’re going to have to think about those.
Peter Morrison (17:19)
Mm-hmm.
Martha McKinnon (17:37)
You might re-engineer those spaces to be more supportive. Again, when we go back to the earlier chapters, there’s just a lot of discussion around clearing away the food, especially the foods that you don’t want to be overindulging in. You’ve got to get them out of sight, out of sight, out of mind. They’ve got to be tucked away in places where you’re apt to forget about them. And the foods you want to encourage, like the fruits and veg, it’s like how can I make them more accessible.
A lot of times taking a little time once a week to do some meal prep can be huge. If your vegetables are already washed and already cut up, it’s much more likely that you’re going to open the fridge and grab them, than if you have to dig into the vegetable drawer and start peeling and chopping. So there’s a lot of little things you can do that will really support you.
And I’ve just found that like the whole meal prep and having food ready to go is just integral to success. If there’s hard boiled eggs in the fridge, if there’s, maybe a tuna salad made up, if there’s quinoa cooked, which I did this week, and in there, I mean, you have these foods that you can just kind of mix and match and assemble.
Peter Morrison (18:48)
Mm-hmm.
Martha McKinnon (19:03)
You know, it just it makes feeding yourself in a nourishing way just so much easier than having to just open up and start from scratch.
Peter Morrison (19:06)
Here’s a funny little story that it’s not anything I did as a result of this book. Actually it was something I did a while ago. I was in the pantry looking for something and I had a jar of Nutella which I bought for a recipe or something. It’s nothing that we eat regularly, but I I like it and a enjoy little bit here and there.
So it’s in the pantry and I knew it was in there, but I had some large plastic cups which were just sort of taking up space. So I turned the cups upside down, sort of over the Nutella jar. So I knew the Nutella was in there, but I go in there multiple times a day and I don’t really think about it. And then for some reason I picked those cups up recently and I’m like, yeah, I just totally forgot it was even in there, but I just kind of chuckled to myself thinking, hmm. Right, and it’s still, the jar’s still like half full, you know. So it works.
Martha McKinnon (20:02)
Out of sight, out of mind really does work.
Right. Where how different is it if every time you go into the pantry to do something it’s there? Yeah, twice a day if you’re going into like we have to go into grab the dog food or this or that and if you’re seeing it, it’s like… yeah. Have a spoonful of Nutella. Yeah. So it’s really powerful. Yeah. And like I said, and it feels easy. It’s like you don’t see it and really don’t think about it.
Peter Morrison (20:13)
Mm-hmm. Right.
Cause oftentimes when you, or I know for me, when I take those snacks, you take a handful of candy or whatever because it’s within reach or it’s on someone’s desk, you’re walking by, you don’t even, or I don’t even really want it. It’s just, it’s sort of a reflex action.
Martha McKinnon (20:51)
It wasn’t premeditated. It was impulsive.
And that’s the whole point about this. If you really have something in mind and it’s premeditated and you’re thinking about it, that’s one thing. But if you’re just grabbing it out of an impulse or a reflex, that’s the whole mindless part of it. And so much of what we do is just mindless because it’s there.
Peter Morrison (21:10)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Martha McKinnon (21:19)
I found when I shifted away and started working at home versus working in an office, life with that got better too because the break rooms and offices can be danger zones. And you’re going in to get coffee or this or that, and then there’s cookies out, there’s stuff you wouldn’t even thought about. The cookies, the this and that, it’s like, oh, it’s there, I’ll grab one. And you wouldn’t have otherwise.
Peter Morrison (21:42)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I remember one office I used to work in every, I think it was every Friday, they would bring in bagels and cream cheese. And I’m just not a really a big breakfast person anyway, but just the fact that it’s there.
Martha McKinnon (22:05)
Right. And it’s free. I don’t know.
Peter Morrison (22:07)
It’s just so weird because you’re not even hungry. You’re not. But there’s a whole big tray of bagels and cream cheese. I better have one.
Martha McKinnon (22:11)
Right. Better have one of those. Yeah.
So if we can really just become aware of how influenced we are, because I think this is just an area that we’re until you start to dive into it and start to read the research and see all these studies, you don’t realize how many ways you’re being influenced until you just take a look at it. Once you know, then once you have this awareness, then everything can shift and you can start seeing things differently and you can start to see, that’s going to be a lot. I can pre plan, right? That’s going to be a landmine or how can I, how can I deal with this? How can I get somebody else to go fill my coffee cup? You know, how can I walk in backwards in with a blindfold? You know, so yeah, so there’s a lot we can learn about how to help ourselves and how to support ourselves once we understand, but you have to understand first.
Peter Morrison (22:50)
Mm-hmm.
Peter Morrison (23:11)
Right. And I think it’s important to you to keep in mind, the book was not written from the perspective of doing this to deprive yourself, it was written to help with what we were talking about earlier, the mindless snacking, the thoughtless eating when you’re not even hungry.
Martha McKinnon (23:38)
Yeah. Right. And how powerful that can be. And I think it’s in the next chapter that we’ll talk more about that because he gives a lot of examples where we don’t really appreciate just how much we could be benefited by cutting back here and there and making these little shifts. You cut back 100 calories here, you know, one less soda there, you know, half a bagel there. You’re not disrupting your life. You’re not trying to adopt some totally different way of eating or being. You make these little shifts.
And like he says, you do this every day for a year and suddenly you’re down 10, 20, 30 pounds in a way that was easy and you’re not overwhelmed and you’re not just caught on this vicious cycle because often what we’re doing. We’re in this constant cycle of in the dieting cycle, in the dieting world, you’re constantly like overwhelming yourself with trying to be too perfect. Right. And then rebounding from that, because there’s so many ways that you can ail at that and feeling bad about yourself and you’re in this constant, cycle of over dieting and then overeating and compensating and then getting upset with yourself.
Peter Morrison (24:20)
Mm-hmm.
Martha McKinnon (24:40)
And it’s like this hamster wheel that just doesn’t move you forward in any meaningful way versus taking a much easier, much kinder, much more sustainable approach. And that’s really become my mantra. I, after so many years of of dieting, and yo-yoing, and every Monday starting something new only to fail by Tuesday, and just suddenly realizing that you could just adopt tiny little shifts over time and totally change your life. So, I can help myself. It’s exciting, yeah.
Peter Morrison (25:28)
That’s awesome. So if you found this helpful or you liked it and think you might be able to share it with somebody that would be wonderful.
Martha McKinnon (25:39)
Yeah, this is all new so please like, please subscribe, please help motivate us to keep going. Please encourage us so that we don’t give up too soon. We don’t want to do that. So we’ll be back in our next episode just to kind of wrap up the last few chapters in Mindless Eating. And if you want to see earlier chapters, you’ll see those here on I don’t know.
Peter Morrison (25:43)
Subscribe. Right.
Martha McKinnon (26:06)
Where do we see these? In YouTube?
Peter Morrison (26:09)
On our YouTube page. And I think I also created a playlist, which hopefully they’ll show up if you like one. I think you’ll then see the other ones as well.
Martha McKinnon (26:13)
Okay. Okay.
Because we haven’t figured out the whole audio part of it yet in terms of putting the audio out there. That’s still to be determined, the podcast part. We’re still, we’re yeah, we’re learning slow and steady. So thanks for tuning in and well yeah, we’ll see you soon. Bye bye.
Peter Morrison (26:26)
All right, thanks. Have a good day, everyone. Bye.
