What is Mindful Eating and How is it Beneficial?

Hey legends,

I am assuming a lot of you are wondering what mindful eating is?

Mindful eating (i.ePaying attention to our food, on purpose, moment by moment, without judgment) is an approach to food that focuses on individuals’ sensual awareness of the food and their experience of the food. Mindful eating is a technique that helps you gain control over your eating habits. It has been shown to promote weight loss, reduce binge eating, and help you feel better.

So let’s break it down a bit more:

Fundamentally, mindful eating involves:

• eating slowly and without distraction
• listening to physical hunger cues and eating only until you’re full
• distinguishing between true hunger and non-hunger triggers for eating
• engaging your senses by noticing colors, smells, sounds, textures, and flavors
• learning to cope with guilt and anxiety about food
• eating to maintain overall health and well-being
• noticing the effects food has on your feelings and figure
• appreciating your food

So in saying that, why is mindful eating actually important?

Eating has become a mindless act, often done quickly. This can be problematic, since it takes your brain up to 20 minutes to realize you’re full. If you eat too fast, the fullness signal may not arrive until you have already eaten too much. This is very common in binge eating.

By eating mindfully, you restore your attention and slow down, making eating an intentional act instead of an automatic one. What’s more, by increasing your recognition of physical hunger and fullness cues, you are able to distinguish between emotional and true, physical hunger.

By completing mindful eating you are less likely to “binge” eat and therefore indulge in too high of calories. This has a detrimental effect on your weight loss journey, ultimately being not what we want. 

So if I am going to leave you with one tip around mindful eating it would be, next time when you have your meal make it a dedicated time for that and try to eat slowly focusing on chewing the food a little bit extra then you usually do. Focus on the smell and taste of the food and approach eating the meal like a bit of a research project or an analysis of all the distinct flavors.

Hopefully we have an understanding now on exactly what mindful eating is and how this is beneficial to our weight loss journeys. I hope this information has been helpful for you! Like always the team is here to help you! If you feel you need further help with your eating and weight loss journey please send us an email or call us, you can find our contact details here.