What Is Mindful Eating?
Healthy Relationship with Food
How often have you felt guilt and other negative emotions after eating foods that you know you shouldn’t have eaten? I do! Every time, I indulge in a mouthwatering chocolate bar, or fat, crispy french fries! As a result, I’ve tried to adopt mindful eating as a way to shed excess fat, and feel healthier, and mentally better. It’s still a challenge, after four years of mindful eating — the scent of the food or sheer hunger envelopes me and I simply dig into my food — mindlessly! I’m a work in progress. Yes, food does taste better when you eat it mindfully! Mindful eating is a more lenient and less stressful approach to eating than conventional diets like the Paleo diet or Atkins diet which some find very strict and difficult to adopt. Mindful eating is being aware of your eating habits. In other words, mindful eating is about exploring your relationship with food and discovering why you eat what you eat, and if you’re really hungry, or just using food as “medication” for your emotional problems. Let’s take a look at what mindful eating is all about and some of the practices in it.
Eating Slowly and Mindfully
We live in a hectic society where people eat hastily giving nary a thought about what they’re eating. Daily, we’re juggling careers and family and often find we just have the time to grab a snack or a bar of chocolate and eat it, on the run, without even thinking twice about it. That little perk up keeps us going during our busy days. Eating mindfully forces you to slow down and ask yourself:
- Why am I eating?
- Am I really hungry?
- Am I eating just because I’m bored and tired?
As an example, if you’re trying to lose weight and get in shape, you know you shouldn’t be eating unnecessarily, and yet you do it. Mindful eating will stop this problem by making you question why you’re eating. You’ll have less guilt and be less likely to eat when you’re not hungry. You won’t be prone to weight gain and your health will also improve. Your relationship with food will get much better and you won’t be constantly thinking about food.
Recognizing Hunger Cues
Mindful eating lets you curtail the automatic routine of eating the wrong foods and forces you to ask yourself if you really need to eat. Just asking this question alone is enough to break the pattern and make you think twice about what you eat. Are you familiar with hunger pangs? When your stomach starts to growl and feels empty and you feel really hungry. Eating to distract yourself or covering up your emotions is something else. If you’re full but, you’re still eating, there might be an underlying emotional issue, it could be stress, depression, loneliness, or even boredom. Mindful eating requires you to pay attention to how your body feels. You also need to pay attention while you eat. Do you feel pleasure? Relief? Are you enjoying the food you’re eating or are you gorging yourself without knowing why? Explore these questions and you’ll have a better understanding why you eat, and why you make, the food choices you do. These revelations make mindful eating so powerful, that it turns the act of eating from an automatic response to one where you’re thinking about what you eat… while you’re eating.
Healthy Relationship with Food
Ultimately, the goal is to create a healthy relationship between you, and the food you eat. Keep in mind that food is meant for sustenance and fuel. The occasional treat is meant to make you feel happy, and nourished, and give you immediate satisfaction. Don’t respond to your bodies’ demands and mind’s cravings without stopping to ask why you feel this way. What you should not feel is guilt, after eating mindfully.
For example, let’s say you’ve had a craving for a sweet, all day long, so you raid the fridge at night and eat four or five slices of cake, till you feel sick and know you overdid it. Guilt takes over and you feel like you’ve let yourself down. Over time, you lose confidence in yourself because of all the times you’ve failed at trying not to snack. With mindful eating, before you put a fork full in your mouth ask yourself why do I crave cake so much? Am I addicted to sugar? What does eating the cake do for me? Will I feel better after I eat the cake? When you stop to think before taking that bite, you’ll realize that you’re going to feel guilty and hate yourself after eating the cake. Wouldn’t you be better off if you just ate one slice of cake, drank a tall glass of water, and called it a day? Of course, you would. You should proud of such a small accomplishment. Congratulations! You’ve taken control over your craving and ate mindfully. Next time, filled with confidence you’ll approach snacking the same way every time you feel like it, and maybe you’ll eat just half a slice of cake. This is how mindful eating works. As the name suggests, it’s all about being mindful of what you put in your mouth. Knowing what you’re eating, how you’re eating, and why you’re eating is eating mindfully. It’s a mental, emotional and to some extent, a spiritual journey. Once you start observing yourself, you’ll be better able to make positive changes to your eating habits and your health. Enjoy your meal!
“Mindful eating means simply eating or drinking while being aware of each sip or bite.” — Thích Nhất Hạn.
This article was originally published on my site at https://www.This article was originally published on my site at https://donnapresents.com/what-is-mindful-eating/.
What types of mindful practices have tried? Meditation is a habit that may come easily to some, or not. I have been meditating for over five years, but there were many days I found myself slipping. These days, not so much, not since I completed the no-cost Action Habits Challenge by Connie Ragen Green, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author, independent publisher, and serial entrepreneur. You can check it out here.
I’m Donna SLam, who loves to blog about how meditation brings self-compassion, peace of mind, and clarity to my life and those of others by sharing tips and strategies on how to live a fulfilling and purposeful life. I enjoy championing others to lead a healthy and happy life through meditation, walking, self-development, and, spending precious time with loved ones.
