Blog89: Why should you start Mindful Eating?

Mindful eating is a practice that develops your awareness of eating habits and allows you to pause between your triggers and your actions. Most emotional eaters feel powerless over their food cravings. When the urge to eat hits, you feel an almost unbearable tension that demands to be fed, right now. Because you’ve tried to resist in the past and failed, you believe that your willpower just isn’t up to snuff. But the truth is that you have more power over your cravings than you think.

Benefits of Mindful Eating

There are a lot of benefits to eating mindfully. Studies have reported that eating mindfully can reduce physiological distress such as depression, anxiety, stress, and eating behaviors including binge eating.  Mindful eating has also resulted in weight loss in overweight and obese people.  

1. Mindful eating helps you distinguish between emotional and physical hunger. It also increases your awareness of food-related triggers and gives you the freedom to choose your response to them.
2. Mindful eating may aid weight loss by changing eating behaviors and reducing the stress associated with eating.
3. Mindful eating can help prevent binge eating. It can both reduce the frequency of binges and the severity of each binge.

+Binge eating- It involves eating a large amount of food in a short amount of time, mindlessly and without control.
4. Mindful eating may effectively treat common, unhealthy eating behaviors like emotional and external eating.

+Emotional eating- This is the act of eating in response to certain emotions.

+External eating- This occurs when you eat in response to environmental, food-related cues, such as the sight or smell of food.

Basically mindful eating can help change unwanted eating patterns.

How to start mindful eating?

Eating while you’re also doing other things such as watching TV, driving, or playing with your phone can prevent you from fully enjoying your food. Since your mind is elsewhere, you may not feel satisfied or continue eating even though you’re no longer hungry. Eating more mindfully can help focus your mind on your food and the pleasure of a meal and curb overeating. There are many simple ways to get started, some of which can have powerful benefits on their own:

1. Eat away from distractions, such as the TV, computer, or eating in the car.
2. Before you start to eat, take a moment to consider what it took to produce your meal, from the farmer to the grocer to the cook.
3. Try eating with your non-dominant hand or using chopsticks instead of a knife and fork.
4. Eating in such a non-familiar way can slow down how fast you eat and ensure your mind stays focused on your food.
5. Allow yourself enough time not to have to rush your meal.
6. Take small bites and chew them well, taking time to notice the different flavours and textures of each mouthful.
7. Put your utensils down between bites. Take time to consider how you feel hungry, satiated before picking up your utensils again.
8. Try to stop eating before you are full. It takes time for the signal to reach your brain that you’ve had enough. Don’t feel obligated to always clean your plate.
9. When you’ve finished your food, take a few moments to assess if you’re really still hungry before opting for an extra serving or dessert.

Mindful eating is a powerful tool to regain control of your eating. If conventional diets haven’t worked for you, this technique is worth considering.

“Mindful eating is eating with awareness.”

Thank You!