Importance of Mindful Eating - Benefits and Strategies

Introduction:

People often eat without thinking. Mindful eating helps to enrich the eating experience as well as help reduce food consumption. People have challenging work schedules such as child care and family responsibilities. All these can be difficult as people try to include mindful eating practices in their lives. By developing useful strategies, one can face the challenges and allow the inclusion of mindful eating practices. Mindful eating can help to improve eating habits as well as improve focus, helps to sleep better, and reduces stress. This article covers mindful eating, its benefits, and ways to incorporate it into daily life.

What Is Mindful Eating?

Mindful eating focuses on increasing awareness during meals. Mindful eating focuses on how one should eat and not on what one is eating. It involves paying attention to what a person feel and think while they are eating. One should eating slowly, avoid distractions while eating, pay attention to body hunger, eat healthy, pleasing, and nourishing foods, and acknowledge their response to foods. For example, overeating can happen during social interactions with family and friends and not because one is hungry. Additionally, distractions from television, mobile phones, computers, tablets, and social media also contribute to overeating as one is not paying attention to what one eat. Therefore, practicing mindful eating techniques can help people to become more aware and responsive to hunger.

How Does It Work?

Make switches from mindless to mindful eating as follows:

• Mindless Eating: Eating while multitasking like driving, working, reading, scrolling social media, and watching television. Eating junk or comfort food. Eating as fast as possible. Ignoring the body's signals of fullness. Eating because it fills the emotional void such as stress, sadness, loneliness, bored, etc.

• Mindful Eating: Focus and attention to the food and enjoy the experience while eating. Eating healthy and nutritious food. Eat slowly, and savor every bite. Listen to the body's signal and eat only until full. Eat only to satisfy the physical hunger.

What Are the Benefits of Mindful Eating?

Mindful eating can help a person create a healthy relationship with food and allow him to choose both nourishing and healthy food. Mindful eating is always about eating the right things by following certain strategies that can help to focus on the senses. Incorporating mindful eating habits have proved to be beneficial to individuals, including;

• Improvement in self-esteem.

• A renewed sense of fullness and hunger.

• Management of weight loss and maintenance of weight.

• An improved sense of empowerment.

• Improved heart health.

• Controls blood sugar levels.

• Reduction in overeating or binge eating.

• Improved digestion.

• Improved food choices.

• Increased satisfaction with food.

• One can feel fuller by eating less food.

• Can learn to appreciate the meals and snacks.

What Are the Strategies for Incorporating Mindful Eating?

Practicing mindful eating in the daily life can be challenging, and it can be achieved by modifying the environment and altering the thought processes. Different strategies can help to successfully practice mindful eating and create long-term healthy eating patterns.

• Ask and Reflect - Always ask whether one is hungry or thirsty before serving. Find if one wants to eat or drink. Know the feelings whether one is sad, stressed, bored, or rushed.

• Avoid Overeating - A person should not stuff himself with food. Stop eating in case one feels full, and one can save the leftovers for later.

• Make Use of Smaller Plates - Smaller plates and cutlery can be used to eat less or control portion size. The less the person sees, the less they will eat.

• Use Out of Sight Out of Mind Strategy - Try to move the serving bowls and plates away from the dinner table as this can prevent second and third servings.

• Use Smaller Serving Utensils - Using smaller serving utensils can eventually lead to less food consumption.

• Practice Portion Control - Avoid eating directly from a large box or bag. Buying items or packets that are smaller in size can control overeating.

• Easy Access - Practicing healthy eating habits such as including healthy fruits and vegetables in the diet. Keeping them in kitchen cabinets and refrigerators for easy access to encourage healthy and mindful eating habits.

• Slow Down - Eating slowly. Chewing the food slowly and enjoying the food while eating. Drinking water in between signals the brain that it is satisfied and not stuffed.

• Eat When Hungry - Find if a person is genuinely hungry. An individual must differentiate between cravings and hunger. Do not let emotions and cravings distract the individual.

• Focus and Pay Attention - Avoid multitasking and especially social media distractions while at the dining table.

• Maintain a Food Journal - Note all the eating patterns and identify the food triggers like hunger, stress, boredom, excitement, and nervousness.

• Give Gratitude - Give gratitude and reflect on the source from where the food came.

What Are Tips for Mindful Eating?

A few tips that can help to eat more mindfully:

• Start with breathing exercises.

• Initially, try to eat alone in silence as this can help the person to avoid distractions.

• Avoid using phones while eating, as phones cause a distraction to calls, games, and social media. Try to keep phones out of sight with notifications and sounds turned off to avoid distraction.

• Stop all activities while working. Avoid reading, watching television, working, or doing anything else during mealtime.

• Keeping a note or writing about all things a person notices about hunger, fullness, and satisfaction to track what they see with time.

• Spending at least 15 to 20 minutes while eating.

• Eating the required quantity of food, along with consuming adequate water, can help feel satisfied more quickly.

Conclusion:

By practicing mindful eating habits, one can focus on the present thoughts and feelings as one eats. In addition, one can change the current eating habits by incorporating healthy, mindful eating habits. Maintaining a present-moment awareness of the food and liquids consumed while eating is known as mindful eating. It entails paying attention to the feelings towards the meal and to the cues the body gives regarding flavor, satisfaction, and fullness. Together with eating, it can also include the actions of purchasing, preparing, and serving food. To practice mindful eating, one must learn to identify feelings, thoughts, and physiological sensations without just judging them.