What is mindful eating and how can it help you lose weight?
Mindful eating is the practice of being more aware, conscious or mindful of your eating experience. This is another tool in your toolbox.
Are you eating in a relaxed setting, seated at the table, enjoying your food, eating at a moderate pace, listening to your hunger and fullness cues? These are some of the basic tenants of mindful eating. Mindful eating is essentially the idea of striving to eat your meals undistracted allowing you to focus on the eating experience and your hunger and fullness signals.
On the other hand, eating while distracted may limit your ability to sense your true feelings of hunger and fullness, causing you to eat mindlessly and possibly overeat or eat less healthy.
Mindless eating, the opposite of mindful eating, may include eating in front of the tv, while driving, talking on the phone, on the go, in a hurry, standing up either in the kitchen or elsewhere, or simply eating while distracted. Mindless eating may also be hurried, rushed, or poorly chewed, with a lack of time and attention on the eating experience, barely remembering what was just eaten.
Here are some basic guidelines to eat more mindfully:
1. Eat at the kitchen table or while seated.
2. Don’t eat while working, watching tv or any other activity that distracts you from the experience of eating. Take a break from work even for 10 minutes while eating can aid in digestion.
3. Strive to slow down and chew your food.
4. Strive to listen to signals of hunger and fullness to cue you when to start and stop eating.
5. Strive to enjoy your food.
If someone is mindlessly eating, eating while rushed or distracted, eating on the go or eating while watching tv for example, they may overate or eat less healthfully. It’s certainly possible that this isn’t the case, but you’ll need to evaluate if you are eating mindlessly and if so, is it leading to overeating or unhealthy eating.
If you are mindlessly eating, do you have to stop tomorrow and perfect the art of mindful eating right away? Not at all. The first step is to simply be aware of mindless eating and then start practicing any aspect of mindful eating (see above 1-5) that you are ready to practice. The goal is to create new habits that get practiced over time. It’s not an all or nothing approach, but rather a practice towards a healthier way of living without judgement, shame, guilt or blame. In all honesty, I do not eat mindfully all the time and it’s a practice I still work on.
Have a healthy day!