Mindful eating is a great place to begin creating a healthier relationship with food.
Mindful eating is the act of removing all distractions and bringing your full attention to the present moment when consuming food. This allows for tuning into the body's sensations around hunger and feelings of fullness.
Becoming mindful with consuming food allows for slowing down and better recognition of the body's cues and signals. This allows for a more intuitive sense when it comes to eating. This creates a healthier relationship with food, an essential component of achieving and maintaining a healthy weight.
Remove Distractions
The most important aspect of mindful eating is removing all distractions.
Distractions take the awareness off of the body, sensations of hunger, satiation and fullness cues. By not paying attention to these feelings and sensations, which can be subtle, they can be missed entirely. This allows for a higher probability to overeat or to consume more food than the body actually needs.
A great way to become a more mindful eater is to ditch the TV and cell phones while eating. Whether its scrolling through social medias, reading E-mails, watching YouTube videos or engaging with the news, these can all be major distractions that hijack your attention while you mindlessly eat. This can cause you to miss your body's fullness cues completely!
Learning how to become more aware about where your mind is while you are eating and really listening to how your body is feeling, will boost your intuitiveness around hunger and fullness.
Slow Down
Another important aspect of mindful eating is the act of slowing down.
We live in a fast-paced world of instant gratification. This means that we do a lot of things more quickly and expect things to happen immediately for us. At times this can be a great thing. For eating, on the other hand, slower is actually better.
Digestion first begins in your mouth. How well are you chewing your food? When you eat slower you allow more time to properly chew and breakdown food in the mouth, which helps with digestion.
Eating slower also allows time for the stomach to send the signal of fullness to the brain before you have time to overindulge.
Check-in
Take a moment to check in with yourself.
Taking a moment to check-in with yourself and evaluate how you are truly feeling before eating can really help you determine if you are eating because you are truly hungry or if it is something else.
Instead of just mindlessly grabbing a snack, take a moment to quite your mind and simply ask yourself these simple questions:
"Am I bored?" Sometimes we eat purely out of boredom. What is something you can do to engage your mind?
"Am I thirsty?" Sometimes hunger and thirst cues can be hard to tell apart. Have you had enough water or fluids today?
"Am I stressed or emotionally vulnerable?" Sometimes hunger cues can be confused with stress or other emotions like sadness. What are other ways you can support yourself physically and emotionally? Taking a walk outside is a great way to calm the mind and body.
Taking just a minute or two to assess what the body actually needs can save unnecessary added calories.
Practice
A good mindful eating practice doesn't have to be difficult, but it might take some getting used to.
Next time you sit down to eat give this a try:
Turn off the TV and set your phone out of reach or turn it on silent lying face down on the table. Before you begin eating take a few full deep breaths. Once you feel calm begin eating. Practice taking one bite at a time. Fully chew eat bite before swallowing and taking in another bite of food. Practice bringing your full attention to the taste and texture of your food. Slowly repeat this process as you bring your awareness to how you feel mentally, emotionally and physically.
Key takeaway
The bottom line is that slowing down, creating a quiet and distraction free environment in which to eat can not only decrease overeating but helps aid in digestion. Taking the time to check in before eating ensures that you're only eating when you are truly hungry. Making these small but significant changes to the way you eat will help you learn to understand your fullness cues and become more intuitive to your body's actual needs.
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