Social Eating Habits

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Related Episodes:

• Eating Habits and How You Experience Life
• Part 1: Eating Behavior Triggers

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Full Episode Transcript:

Social Eating Habits

Hi there, welcome to the podcast. I’m so glad that you’re with me today. I am going to be talking about social eating habits.

Meaning, some common eating habits that we typically have in social situations, and why. I’ll also be sharing some tips for you, if you want some better control of your eating habits in social situations moving forward.

So, I’m not going to go into full detail of why historically food has always been a part of social situations. But, you probably can think about your life and how food can be a major topic of conversation socially, it can also be sort of the event. By this I mean that people will get together to eat.

 A lot of my friends really love getting together to eat. Lots of families love getting together to eat.

Growing up, my immediate family was not big on food and eating events, so for me it wasn’t as much a big part of my family life. However, for many, it is.

There are especially some cultures where food is a very important part of family gatherings and holidays.

In fact, even just in the United States, many of our holidays are centered around food. Thanksgiving probably being the best example. Even Mother’s Day is sort of focused around brunch. Halloween is focused around the candy, also costumes, but mostly candy.

Christmas, well that’s a big one. Think about all those Christmas cookies and all those Christmas feasts. A big part of birthday celebrations is birthday cake. Valentine’s Day has a big chocolate focus. Memorial Day and 4th of July are focused around BBQ foods.

There are very few holidays that people typically don’t get together for a big feast, or where the focus is not on some sort of sweet treat.

Those are personally my favorite. I would consider Labor Day as one of them and definitely one of my favorite holidays. It’s just a day to enjoy and I’m going to sound like a total party pooper, but it’s a day that I get to do something that I want to do and not have to go to any events. I don’t have to worry about making a dish to bring somewhere to some big gathering. I know, you’re all probably going to hate me for saying this. It’s just my truth.

I do enjoy family and friend gatherings for sure, because I love my friends and family and also enjoy meeting new people. I really love focusing more on seeing and being around them than the food.

Which, if you’d like to do this too, I will help you with in this episode. Trust me, it makes it much easier to be around food and feel completely in control and not worried that I’m going to eat too much.

So for you, think about what it would be like to be able to go to a family function or a gathering with friends or even just to a restaurant with some friends, and get say 90-95% of the enjoyment from the people and the connections and conversation, and maybe just like 5 to 10% of the enjoyment from the tasty foods.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t enjoy foods at social events. However, what if I told you that overall, your level of enjoyment of the gathering was going to be so much higher, because the enjoyment from connecting with people is so much more substantial than the short term enjoyment from food? Isn’t that wonderful? I think so.

So if you’re someone who really enjoys the food at family functions or social events, I want you to consider this.

Imagine right now the enjoyment level that you have from social events where you’re really getting a lot of the enjoyment from the food. There’s nothing wrong with that, I just want to mention that. But take that enjoyment level and 10 times that.

What if you could get that much enjoyment from the social event? That’s what can happen if the focus is more on the people and the connections. Because that actually increases serotonin, which is a neurotransmitter, otherwise known as a hormone, that helps to just make you feel good. I mean really feel good.

Plus, the connection that you form with maybe a new person you just met, or a deeper connection with someone you already knew, because you had really great conversation, will be much longer lasting than any sort of brief pleasure from food.

Again, still enjoy the food, but really try to focus your attention on the people. Or if there’s an actual event going on that you can participate in the enjoyment from that as well. Because your enjoyment levels from those things is going to be much higher than that short term pleasure from the food as I mentioned. It’s going to be longer lasting.

So, how exactly can you make this easier for yourself? Because we all know it’s easy for me to just say Oh yeah focus more on the other things besides the food at these family events. Well here are a few tips to help you with this.

Before the gathering or event, whatever it is, think about the people who will be there that you know. The people who will be there that you care about. Imagine yourself greeting them with a big warm hug or however it is you greet people. Imagine yourself deep in conversation with one or several of them imagine yourself smiling and laughing.

If there is an activity, imagine yourself doing the activity with the person or people. Also, if there is an activity, think of the benefits to you of doing that particular activity. Say for example if it is a family BBQ at a park and there’s going to be some volleyball or there’s going to be some cornhole, imagine yourself doing the activity and really having a great time.

You can even go into more detail. I oftentimes do this. If I’m going to someone’s house, I visualize the coziness of their home and look forward to that. If it’s an outdoor event, I think about how it’s going to be such a sunny day and have just a light breeze and how beautiful the setting is going to look.

Imagining all these things ahead of time takes some of the focus away from the food and puts more of it on the other things. The people, the activity, the surroundings, how things will feel. You can even do this if you’re just simply going to a restaurant with a friend or two.

If you’ve been to that restaurant before, think about how nice the interior looks, how cozy it feels. If you’ve never been to that restaurant, look it up online and visualize enjoying how the restaurant looks and feels, based upon any images on the website. I know this sounds a little cheesy but trust me it works. I have been doing this for years.

So, these are all things that you can do ahead of time. Now what about the actual social gathering itself? I have some tips for different types of social gatherings.

First, we’ll start out with the restaurant setting. Now of course, you’re going to want to try to focus your attention on all the things you envisioned ahead of time. The delight of the interior of the restaurant, maybe the coziness of it. How good it feels to greet whoever you’re meeting at the restaurant. Focusing on the conversation.

But what about the food itself? You of course want to be able to enjoy the food. So here, really pay attention to every forkful or spoonful. An easy way to do this is to put your fork or spoon down while you’re chewing. That way, you’re focused just on that mouthful and not on getting the next fork or spoonful ready. Really the flavor and texture. This is mindful eating.

With mindful eating, you’ll be able to enjoy the food more fully, and you’ll find yourself eating less of it.

Okay, moving onto the next type of social gathering. The holiday gathering.

Making a food to bring with you can be helpful in this situation, because even though it’s work, it makes it easier to focus on providing other people with pleasure from food, than getting the pleasure from food yourself.

Again, certainly you can still enjoy the food that is there, but making a dish to bring is just one way to get more pleasure from other things besides just consuming the food yourself. Hope that makes sense.

Also, like you practiced envisioning ahead of time, enjoy the company you’re with. Maybe look for someone you don’t know and go introduce yourself. What do you have to lose? You could gain a new friend, right?

Regarding the food, take a little bit of food at first, so you can sort of taste test. What oftentimes happens is, we automatically take larger servings and when we don’t really like something, feel compelled to finish it anyway so as not to offend.

Nod your head right now if you’ve had that happen to you. Everyone listening is nodding their head because I guarantee that has happened to everyone.

And even if you make the mistake of taking a large portion right away and you don’t like it. Don’t eat it. Really what’s the worst that will happen? The person who made it might see you throw it out (and trust me, there are ways you can be discrete about that). But let’s just say that person saw you throw it out, what is the worst thing they can think?

Maybe something like, “Oh I guess so and so didn’t like that very much.” Is that REALLY going to bother that person for very long? No. And, they can also just as easily think something more like, “Oh, so and so is full and can’t finish the food.” Which is typically why most people throw out food, right?

I get it though, it’s very easy to get caught up in people-pleasing. And family or friend gatherings makes it very easy to do this. Even work situations where someone brought in a dish they made. Many people feel obligated to have some, so as not to offend.

What’s going to happen though if you don’t have any of it? That this person is going to hate you forever if you said, “no thank you. I’m trying to change my eating habits”? That’s not likely at all.

But what can happen if you have some and you weren’t even hungry or you were trying to limit your sugar intake for example, is that you’re going to feel badly about yourself afterward and that can cause a whole spiral of events.

So, don’t worry about offending someone at a gathering. Not likely to occur. Take small amounts of each food you want to try and taste-test before going for a more typical serving size. This is what I often do and it works. It’s a win-win, because then you get to eat the food you really loved and you only had to have a small taste of the food you didn’t care for.

The last one I wanted to cover was larger events like weddings. Weddings and other large events like banquets can have a wide array of food and oftentimes, since you aren’t paying for it, it’s easy to overeat.

So of course, try to shift your focus on the people and whatever is going on at the event itself, and take small samples of the foods first, rather than larger portions.

But also for larger events like this, think about how you will feel later or the next day if you overdid it. Ask yourself if you want to remember the event as “Oh I ate or drank way too much at that wedding.”

Or, would you rather remember the people, the dancing, the conversation, the laugher, joy? And then of course sprinkled with “Oh yes and the food was tasty too.”

Alright, so those are just a few tips for you to make the next social event a little more fulfilling and leave you feeling more in control around food, which also means less negative thoughts and emotions after the fact. It’s no fun going to a gathering and then feeling badly emotionally and physically with what or how much you ate.

It’s way more fun to magnify your enjoyment level with the non-food things like the people, and then like I said, just kind of sprinkle in the enjoyment from the food, but from being mindful and in control.

With that, I hope you enjoy your next social gathering so much more. Once your brain sees how nice that is, it won’t want to go back to food being the main focus.

By the way, if you’re not receiving my weekly tips via email, make sure you sign up for them. I send them out every Sunday morning. They’re short, to the point, and I help you with things like overeating, emotional eating, weight loss habits, mindset, motivation and everything in between.

You can sign up for them here: https://katemjohnston.com/sunday-jumpstart . See you inside. Thanks for listening my friend. Take care and I’ll talk to you next week.