If I may boast for a minute, my level of technology use is pretty elite. I’ve made major strides in recent years to decrease my phone addiction, like deleting social media, turning my phone off an hour before bed, and using a physical alarm clock instead of the one on my phone.

But there is one technology-related habit I’m still not happy about: watching YouTube while eating.

While I’m pretty good at eating brekkie without watching YouTube, and I generally eat dinner with my family, lunchtime is when I really struggle. Pretty much every day without fail, when lunchtime comes around, I’ll pull up some YouTube video on my laptop and listen to/watch it while I make my lunch, and then while I eat it.

This is stupid for several reasons. Firstly, half the time I can’t find a video I genuinely want to watch, but still put something on anyway because it’s “something to watch”. Secondly, it slows down my lunch-making process and makes me procrastinate getting back into study after lunch (or whatever it is I’m doing that day), making me feel rushed. Finally, it’s at the point now where I feel like I can’t make or eat lunch without a YouTube video playing in the background.

It’s that last point that concerns me the most, and from asking around, it seems like a lot of people my age feel the same way. Many people I know haven’t cooked or eaten a meal (by themselves) without watching TV or listening to a podcast or music in years.

This troubles me. Imagine if your friend told you that they felt they couldn’t eat a meal without getting high. You’d tell them they have a serious problem. But for some reason, when it’s a TV show or a podcast, it’s just completely okay that we can’t function without it? I know that might seem like a crazy analogy, but it freaks me out that I feel dependent on the stimulation of a YouTube video to do something as simple as eating a meal.

This is something I have been better at in the past. I have gone through phases of being good and being bad with it, but it’s been over a year since I’ve consistently eaten (and made) lunch with no distractions.

I know from experience that when I do eat and cook mindfully, I feel more clear-headed, and miss watching YouTube videos far less than I expected. However, it is just so damn hard to overcome the cravings from my brain telling me that it needs more stimulation than it is getting.

With uni starting back up, and my brain becoming even more of a mess of thoughts than usual, I could use some of that extra clarity. That’s why this week: I practiced mindful eating and cooking for every meal.

As I said, I was already pretty good with breakfast, so that wasn’t an issue. Neither were the dinners where I ate with my family. What was difficult was dinners where I ate alone (usually after a late shift at work), all lunches, and any time I was cooking and preparing food.

To be honest, it was easy enough to do, but only because I knew I was doing it for this blog, and I didn’t want to let myself down. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t uncomfortable, because it was.

As lunchtime approached on the first day, I had literal physiological stress symptoms at the thought of not watching YouTube. My heart rate increased, I got a slightly sick feeling in my stomach, and I felt stressed. It was honestly embarrassing how stressed my body and brain were getting, but it shows how strong that chemical addiction really is.

While this stress decreased as the days went on, it never fully disappeared, even by the final day. What I did notice, however, is how bloody easy it was to actually eat and cook mindfully—once I got started doing it. Pretty quickly my mind just filled the blank space with something interesting to think about, or I just paid more attention to my food or my cooking, which was enjoyable in itself.

Over the first few days, I didn’t notice much benefit, but I think that’s because I was really rushing my eating. By the end of the week, I had slowed down, and that’s when I noticed how much clearer my headspace was.

So was it one of my more daring feats for this blog? No, certainly not. But it was a great reminder that living healthier is more achievable that it sometimes feels.

Did I enjoy it and would I do it again? I definitely enjoyed it, and want to continue to do it in the future, as I know how valuable it is for my mental clarity.

What did I learn? I learned to separate what my brain and body are telling me from what I want to do. My brain was screaming out for YouTube, but by actually paying attention to those feelings, I realised that that’s all they were: feelings. They didn’t have to control my actions unless I let them, and I didn’t.