What is Mindful Eating and How to do it

If you want to gain more control over your eating habits, mindful eating is a great way to do just that. Mindful eating has been shown to promote healthy weight loss, reduce the possibility of binge eating, and help you feel better as a whole. If you have asked yourself the question: “What is mindful eating?”, you may be surprised to find the answer is quite simple.

What is Mindful Eating?

Mindful eating is all about allowing yourself to become more aware of the nurturing and positive opportunities that are available to you through the food you select and the way you prepare it. This is done by channeling and respecting your inner wisdom.

This way of consuming food also helps you to use all your senses when it comes to the foods you choose to eat. You want to make sure that it is nourishing to your body, but also satisfying to consume. You become more aware of your hunger cues, and how satisfied you become while eating and allows those to guide your choices to start and finish eating.

Don’t forget, if you’re looking to establish healthy habits (like adding more vegetables to your diet in fun and tasty ways) be sure to secure a spot in the 21 Days to a Healthy Habits Challenge.

What Mindful Eating is About

• Accepting that everyone experiences eating differently.
• Knowing that there is no one correct, or wrong way to consume food.
• Identify why you feel like eating and what needs or emotions might be triggering that.
• Being aware of the varying degrees of awareness that surround the experience of food.
• Becoming aware of the way you make choices that support your overall wellbeing and health.
• Focusing your attention to eating by breaking it down to a moment by moment basis.
• Promoting choice, balance, acceptance, and wisdom.
• Realizing the interconnection of living beings with the earth. This means cultural practices and the impact food choices make to those.

Mindful Eating Tips

If you want to start your mindful eating journey, it is important to know where to start. There are some mindful eating tips that can help you to get started on the right foot.

Change the Menu

Eating the same breakfast, lunch and dinner day after day means you are in an eating rut. It is important to try new cooking styles, foods and even different types of cuisine to make you more mindful of what it is you are consuming.

Here’s some recipes to try:

• Lemon Oregano Chicken
• Pot Roast Soup
• Mocha Chia Seed Pudding

Take Smaller Bites

Eating too fast will not give you a positive food experience. The best thing you can do is lessen the size of the bites you are taking. In fact, you can also chew slower.

This will help you to improve your focus at mealtimes and help you truly enjoy your food.

Set Your Fork Down

Put your fork down between every few bites of food you take. This small pause will slow down your eating, making you far more mindful about your food.

Focus

When you are eating, don’t allow thoughts of your next meal, dessert or even snacks you may be planning for later to creep in. You want to truly focus on the foods you are eating and nothing else. If you are finding it difficult to do this, it may be time to start making your meals more flavourful and interesting by adding fresh ingredients and new foods that you look forward to consuming.

Stop Thinking Negatively

Berating yourself for eating something unhealthy, or even classifying certain foods as good or bad, is negative. Eating meals should be a fun and pleasurable experience that leaves you feeling happy and fulfilled, not guilty. Appreciate the positive things the meal you are consuming has to offer and push out the negative thoughts.

Eat at the Table

Eating meals on the couch, in your car or even at your desk, creates an environment that promotes multi-tasking. This removes the focus from your meal to your surroundings.

When eating at home, stick to sitting at the kitchen table. In fact, you can make it a more pleasurable experience by adding in placemats or flowers. This will create a relaxing and inviting place to eat.

Don’t forget, if you’re looking to establish healthy habits (like adding more vegetables to your diet in fun and tasty ways) be sure to secure a spot in the 21 Days to a Healthy Habits Challenge.

Reflect on What You are Eating

Take the time to truly understand what you are eating. Think about where your food items came from. What do the vegetables look like on the plant? Who grew them? This will help you to create a sense of gratitude around your food and appreciation of your eating experience.

Pay Attention

While you eat your meals, pay close attention to the temperatures, textures, and flavours of what you are consuming. Doing this will help you to realize new things you may not have noticed from consuming some of the same items. This can make your experience with food much more enjoyable.

Listen to Yourself

It is important that you focus on listening to yourself as you eat. Pay close attention to your hunger cues. Slow down your eating, listen to your body and stop eating when you feel full.

Have a Meal

Eating from a box or a bag makes tracking your serving sizes difficult. Even if you are getting takeout, use a plate or bowl to consume your meal. This will help you to truly see the portion size you are serving up to yourself.

This is true even for snacks. Whether you are eating crackers and dips or cheeses, seeds and nuts, portioning out your food will keep you from going overboard on servings.

Work to Eat

When eating, enjoy food items that require a little bit of work to consume. Eat items that require peeling like bananas and oranges, serve your nuts in their shell, consume items like cherries and olives with their pits still intact and more.

When you remove the inedible parts during your meal, it helps to slow down the pace in which you eat.

When it comes to mindful eating, there are many ways to implement this. Just make sure that you truly take time with what you are consuming, enjoy what you are eating and pay close attention to the way you feel.

If you want to join a community of women who are working towards mindful eating and healthy habits, please join The Healthy Mama’s Club on Facebook. It’s totally free!