Get Healthier with these Eating Hacks - Part II

by Mila McManus, MD

Welcome back to Part II: Mindful Eating Hacks for 2025. Last week, we introduced the idea that learning to be mindful about your eating habits can be transforming.  We provided the first six of twelve mindful eating hacks for better health in 2025. You can follow this link to read them. This week, we present the other six mindful eating hacks that are scientifically supported to improve health and nutritional lifestyles. Most of the habit hacks are easy to implement and don’t cost anything. Implement them individually or together for greater impact. You may want to try incorporating one each month during 2025.

SEVEN: Clean out your freezer, fridge, and pantry.  Mindfulness is much easier when every available choice in the house is a good one. The whole family can benefit by hacking this habit so that items such as candy bars, potato chips, soda pop, and ice cream won’t be kept in the house as a routine choice. Ultra-processed foods and the commercials about them on television are BOTH designed to trick your neurochemistry into craving them.  Don’t fall prey to the advertising.  Put clean, healthy choices in the house, and keep the bad choices off the grocery list. 

EIGHT: In response to hunger, hydrate first. Hack the hangry habit. When you think you are hungry, pause and think about drinking a glass of water.  This mindful eating habit can help curb your appetite.  One side note: avoid drinking too much liquid with your meal.  Liquids dilute your stomach acids and enzymes, and reduce the quality of your digestive process.  During meals, minimize your liquid intake to 4 ounces or less.  (Also, it takes 10-20 minutes for water to pass through your stomach, so after that, you’re good to go with respect to eating.)

NINE: Change the order in which you eat your meal. Eat some protein, healthy fats, and raw vegetable fiber first. Eat starches and sugar at the end of the meal.   Protein, healthy fats, and fiber are slower to digest, resulting in satiation, which is why this is a good mindful eating habit. Sugars and starches digest very rapidly, spike blood sugar, and create hunger cravings again.  Placing the slower-moving, longer-digesting foods first slows the starches and sugars afterward. For example, if you plan to have grilled chicken, rice, salad, and fruit, eat the chicken and salad first, followed by the rice and fruit. Eating a salad first is another good strategy for filling up with fiber in raw vegetables, then eating protein, followed by potato, rice, fruit, or sweets.

TEN: Stop eating at least three hours before bedtime. Quality sleep is a challenge for many people. One reason can be that the digestive process is preventing sleep from occurring. When food has had a chance to digest, this mindful eating hack allows the body to focus on the relaxation, repair, and cleansing that should happen during sleep. If your stomach is full and digesting, your body is distracted from other duties.

ELEVEN: Fast at least 12 hours per 24 hours. Food scarcity triggers the body to clean the house, eliminating waste, debris, and damaged cells. The process is called autophagy and occurs when food is avoided for 12-15 hours.  The good news is that you are already more than halfway there if you try to sleep at least 7-8 hours every night.  All you need to do is mindfully incorporate #10 above and do the same the next morning by delaying breakfast for 2-3 hours.  Drinking water, black coffee, or tea will not break the fast.  But you have broken the fast if you add anything with calories, such as creamer, sugar, or food. Mindfully fasting for 12 hours reduces snacking and energy consumption to fewer daily hours, often resulting in less overall energy consumption.

TWELVE: If it has a drive-thru, don’t eat there. When it comes to healthy food, convenience is not your friend.  If you want to take control of your health, you must face the truth about convenience foods.  Don’t be fast, cheap, and easy regarding your diet. If you are, you can expect disease and ill health.  This mindful eating hack will transform your health. Slow down, invest in your nutritional health, and allow a little more time in your schedule to eat healthfully.  This may be the last mindfulness habit hack, but it will have long-lasting beneficial outcomes for the entire family.

Here’s to mindfully eating your way to new habits and better health in 2025!

Reference

https://drhyman.com/pages/eating-guide-101

The Woodlands Institute for Health & Wellness - Mila McManus MD

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