Potty Training & Mindful Eating Have More In Common than you Realize

Why Eating at the Dinner Table is as Important as Potty Training Your Child

Written by Jennifer Broxterman, MSc, RD
Registered Dietitian, Founder of NutritionRx

Imagine we skipped potty training as parents and let our toddlers–who quickly turn into 10-year-olds—pee wherever they wanted: in the plant in the corner of the living room, behind the couch, on the back seat of the car, in the middle of the room. Kind of a gross thought, right?

It sounds absurd, but when it comes to our eating environments, this is exactly what we have done to ourselves.

Consider this: If we feel a slight pee coming on and there’s no bathroom around, we don’t panic. We know we’ll be fine to wait out the 30 minute drive home, because we learned at the age of two-and-a-half how to hold our bladders until we’re in an appropriate location, and we have the bodily control to do so. 

• But when we sense a slight desire to eat, we allow ourselves to eat anywhere and in any position: in the car, standing up while cooking, on the couch while watching TV, at our work desk, in our bed, and on and on. On the drive back from work, we might not even wait until we’re home. We might decide on a whim to stop at a gas station or go through drive-through to grab a snack or dinner.

It’s Not All Your Fault

Food manufacturing companies, fast food restaurants and especially advertising has effectively trained us to think that sitting down at a table to eat together isn’t important. They tell us it’s OK to stop at a drive-through or pick up a chocolate bar at the gas station. It’s OK to eat on the go because “you’re busy,” the advertisers say, so “here’s a quick and easy snack to chomp down at your desk.” In fact, there are entire lines of food products called grab-and-go snacks.

This attitude has led to an epidemic of mindless eating. And mindless eating has led to overeating. 

Do you ever consider how many calories you eat before dinner as you’re standing up, chopping ingredients, and popping food into your mouth?

Or consider this: Have you ever sat down and eaten an entire bag of chips in 30 to 40 minutes, as you mindlessly pound chip after chip, while watching Netflix? You’re not even paying attention to what you’re doing, how much you’re eating, or why you’re snacking. You’re just decompressing (or so you think). Mindlessly. Chances are, if you were at a dinner table with a friend having a conversation, you wouldn’t eat that entire bag of chips or full box of cookies, right? 

For more on practical tips to become a more mindful eater, check out this article.

Food for Thought

Potty training teaches us at a young age that the bathroom is the only room and place for that behaviour. 

• Imagine if we reassociated the dinner table as being the only place you go when you eat? 

(Yet another reason to finally clear off your dinner table, which has slowly but surely become a dumping grounds for papers and miscellaneous items that you have no idea what to do with. But I’ll leave the decluttering advice to Marie Kondo. I hear she wrote a pretty good book about it.)

Final Thought

As always, no foods are bad foods. No foods are off limits. But if you can master not only what you’re choosing to put into your body, but also WHERE you are when you eat them, as well as HOW and WHY you’re eating, then you can start to heal your relationship with food and develop overall healthier habits.