How often are you rushing through meals? or skipping them? Or being distracted by your phone or tv? How we eat, and the emotions and feelings surrounding eating and food, can impact our quality of life as well as our overall health.
What is mindful eating?
Mindful eating is about being in the present moment while eating, including being aware of your senses, tastes, cravings, and physical cues around food. It is observing how foods make you feel, and feelings of satisfaction and fullness. It brings awareness, and acceptance in the feelings and thoughts that you observe.
The purpose of mindful eating is to connect your mind and body. We live in a busy world, we’re either jumping from task to task, or eating on our commute to work, or eating in front of the computer. On top of that, we even eat when we’re not hungry, and we eat when we feel negative emotions like sadness, anxiety, loneliness or boredom.
Mindfulness isn’t something that we can always do, and its not always perfect. However, if you’re trying to make changes for eating, the first step is to bring awareness of the process surrounding eating and food. It’s not to become obsessed with because everyone’s timing and way to be mindful can be different.
Benefits of Mindful Eating:
- Helps relieve stress and anxiety.
- Allows you to slow down in the midst of your busy life.
- Feel emotionally aware and connected while eating.
- Knowing when you feel full and satisfied, preventing overeating.
- Learning how to manage your emotions and food.
- Improved digestion.
- Less bloating.
- Better efficient nutrient absorption.
- Self-Empowerment with the food choices that make you feel good.
How to practice mindful eating?
- Set an alarm reminder for your meal times. Especially if you’re the type to forget to eat, or get too busy and push your meal back until later. Once you push past the point of being over hungry, it makes you over eat and also end up grabbing whatever is in sight.
- Put your distractions away. Turn over your phone, tune out of your environment. Focus on the moment – getting your meal ready. Give yourself a break from your phone – giving your eyes some much needed time away from blue light. Give yourself permission so that you don’t have to be “on” constantly. You’re allowed to take a break!
- Connect to your emotions: How do you feel before during and after you eat? Are you feeling stressed? Anxious? Angry? All these emotions negatively affect us while we’re eating, and can cause is to binge eat or even to overeat.
Whatever your emotions are, just acknowledge it, without judgement and observe it. - Take a moment before eating, take a couple of deep breathes, inhaling through the nose, and exhaling through the mouth, and relax your body, relax your jaw, relax your shoulders. And feel gratitude for the food that you’re going to eat. You can even pray over it if you choose. I simply just say thank you for this delicious meal that is nourishing my body. You can really say whatever you like.
- Properly chew and savor your food, the texture, the taste, and the flavors. Put down your utensils between bites. Food should be well chewed to help with digestion and nutrient absorption. When you don’t properly chew your food it can lead to overeating, bloating, constipation, weight gain, and even acid reflux. It takes our body at least 20 minutes to send signals of fullness to the brain. Give your body and brain enough time to feel truly full and satisfied.
- Reflect on how you feel after you eat. How did your meal actually make you feel? Do you feel energized? Do you feel lethargic? Write these down or put it down in your notes, so you can actually examine and find the patterns within how you eat and what you eat, and your overall body.
Some additional mindful eating tips:
- Don’t chug a lot of water or drinks before or during your meals – they give a false sense of fullness, that tends to come back later in the afternoon or evening – where you feel very hungry and tend to start munching. Even if it’s a little bit it can add up. You can finish your meal with a hot or warm tea or lemon water or aloe vera- as it helps with digestion.
- Get curious about your meal – Is it balanced? Do I have my protein, carbs and healthy fats? Do I have vegetables and fruits? What is my meal composed of? Where does my food even come from? Am I eating more of any specific food group? This gives you the opportunity to make changes. Instead of removing foods from your diet, think about what can I add in? What can I replace this with? What can I do differently to make it a healthier and more nutrient dense meal.
- Plan ahead for your week, and month. I always recommend planning ahead – even if its a tentative schedule. Put in your parties, events, and etc, so you can also balance your life. If it’s not prepping your meals in advance, it may just be knowing what and where you’re going to eat. You know what it feels like when you’re about to go eat – and you have no idea, and then you end up getting fast food, or something you didn’t plan because you’re over hunger and desperate for food, yeah – we’re trying to prevent that from happening. Create a plan, and stick with it as much as possible.
- Food journal – and no I’m not talking about counting your calories. Because you don’t need to count calories unless you have ultra specific goals. I mean just writing down what you’re eating and drinking and when, and how you’re feeling during those times and afterwards. It can bring enough awareness to know what changes and improvements you can make. I highly recommend our 90 day wellness journal – as it is an all-in-one planner for your meals, fitness, as well as a daily food journaling pages. Available on Amazon paperback or digitally.
- How often should you do this? And it’s honestly, up to you how often you choose to be mindful while eating. I feel the best way is to start off for a week, and see what you’re currently doing. And then from there doing it every so often, I mean it honestly feels pretty good once you start and I can catch myself when I’m eating too fast and not paying attention to the moment. Merely checking in every once a while can give you more control over what your eating, how your eating and how your feeling. It can allow you to feel more satisfied, and really enjoy your meals and have a better relationship with food and your body.
Mindful eating is very self-empowering, as long as you don’t become obsessive or hard on yourself about it. We’re so used to taking things and doing them on autopilot, so it may feel pretty unfamiliar or uncomfortable when you notice how you’re eating. Remember to use your own best judgement to what feels right. Not everyday can be perfect so give yourself some kindness and grace as you learn to be more intuitive and mindful with eating.
