When Dining Alone, Don’t Invite Your Phone

How often do you find yourself eating a meal by yourself either at work, on the road, or at home, instinctively reaching for your smartphone to keep you company? Yep. Me too. All of the time.

At least it WAS all of the time. Since successfully enduring a horrible, eight-day colon cleanse during the Thanksgiving holiday which included five days of liquids-only (JOY!), I have been making a conscious effort to be more mindful about my food and beverage intake. Not only have I been mindful about WHAT I am putting into my body – I refuse this year to pack on the Minnesota Winter 10 – but I am also watching HOW I eat.

It turns out that since becoming single earlier this year, I developed quite the nasty habit of eating with my phone. Take a bite, click on Facebook. Take another bite, scroll through the News Feed. Take a third, read some news (or faux-news) on HuffPost. Sip some water, click on email to see if that client has responded to my proposal. Take another bite, text a friend about plans for the weekend. Repeat until my plate is empty and/or the show I just started watching on Hulu is done.

What’s the result of this mindless eating? When we pull our attention away from the (hopefully) delicious, nutritious food in front of us, we not only rob ourselves of the valuable experience of truly enjoying the flavors and sensations, but we also keep our brains plugged into the noise of social media and the pressures of work. Before we know it, we’ve snarfed down our meal without so much as even noticing it! Ever ask yourself if you’ve eaten lunch or not, because you can’t remember it? Yeah, me neither. ;)