Choice Eats

The first step toward changing your eating habits is to become aware of what and why you eat. Then your plate, like your life, can be delightfully full.

By Lynn Ginsburg and Mary Taylor

The granola is in the bowl, the banana is sliced, and the first bite is at your lips when you realize that you're not hungry—or that you'd rather have yogurt this morning. So why did you pour milk on those oat clusters without even considering what you wanted? Habit, of course.

You buy chocolates when you're feeling blue. You shun butter for your baked potato even though your body is crying out for that dab of fat. We're all creatures of habit, taking the same route to work each day, going to the same yoga class each week, slipping into the same routine of dinner, dishes, bed (or take-out in front of the TV) each evening. The trouble is, we're often acting without awareness, at odds with the most basic teaching of yoga: Life is infinitely richer when we tap into a conscious awareness of the present moment.

To recognize the unconscious influences on your behavior, it helps to understand the yogic notion of samskara. The Sanskrit word has a host of different translations, but you can think of samskaras as patterns that are reinforced by repetition, the well-worn grooves of thought and behavior that give rise to habits—like preparing your usual breakfast without even checking to see if you're hungry.

Some of the strongest samskaras are formed around food. Because you eat several times a day, you've had countless opportunities to deepen the patterns that determine what, when, where, and how much you eat. You may have even consciously trained yourself to see certain habits as good (like buying whole grain instead of white bread), and others as bad (like eating a cookie). By examining your samskaras, you can stop shopping and eating out of habit and start recognizing what you're truly hungry for.

Wake Up and Smell the Present

The Buddhist master Nagarjuna, who lived in the second or third century, called samskaras "the traces of deeds done in the past." The deepest samskaras are created by acting or thinking in the same ways over and over again. So, for example, if every time you argue with your partner, you drown your sorrows in a pint of ice cream, you're strengthening the samskara of using food to soothe emotional distress. The more often you do it, the more automatic the behavior becomes. After a while, your hand will reach for the ice cream after a fight even if you're too upset to eat.

Many situations trigger responses to food—whether it's feeling lonely on hearing the word "Thanksgiving" or thinking "three weeks until my beach vacation." A food's flavor, texture, and aroma can also provoke intense emotional, physical, and mental responses, and unconsciously dictate your behavior. Walking past a bakery whose yeasty loaves have just come out of the oven can make you salivate at the thought of a thick, steaming slice of bread slathered with butter, and then cause you anxiety as you consider how quickly that smear of butter goes to your hips. In an instant, you've cycled from joy to dread. Instead of considering your hunger level or your body's need for nutrients, you've allowed unconscious thought patterns to dictate whether you reach for a loaf. Rather than be awake to the vivid reality of the food in front of you, and of your hunger in any moment, you instead evaluate the food according to your own fears or society's abstract notions about carbohydrates or fats.

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