![A wooden spoon sits amidst probiotic capsules](https://www.helpguide.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Probiotics-384x257.jpg)
![A wooden spoon sits amidst probiotic capsules](https://www.helpguide.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Probiotics-384x257.jpg)
Paying attention to the moment-to-moment experience of eating can help you improve your diet, manage food cravings, and even lose weight. Here’s how to start eating mindfully.
Mindful eating is maintaining an in-the-moment awareness of the food and drink you put into your body. It involves observing how the food makes you feel and the signals your body sends about taste, satisfaction, and fullness. Mindful eating requires you to simply acknowledge and accept rather than judge the feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations you observe. It can extend to the process of buying, preparing, and serving your food as well as consuming it.
For many of us, our busy daily lives often make mealtimes rushed affairs. We find ourselves eating in the car commuting to work, at the desk in front of a computer screen, or parked on the couch watching TV. We eat mindlessly, shoveling food down regardless of whether we’re still hungry or not. In fact, we often eat for reasons other than hunger—to satisfy emotional needs, to relieve stress, or cope with unpleasant emotions such as sadness, anxiety, loneliness, or boredom. Mindful eating is the opposite of this kind of unhealthy “mindless” eating.
Mindful eating isn’t about being perfect, always eating the right things, or never allowing yourself to eat on-the-go again. And it’s not about establishing strict rules for how many calories you can eat or which foods you have to include or avoid in your diet. Rather, it’s about focusing all your senses and being present as you shop for, cook, serve, and eat your food.
While mindfulness isn’t for everyone, many people find that by eating this way, even for just a few meals a week, you can become more attuned to your body. This can help you to avoid overeating, make it easier to change your dietary habits for the better, and enjoy the improved well-being that comes with a healthier diet.
BetterHelp es un servicio de terapia en línea que le conecta con terapeutas acreditados y certificados que pueden ayudarle con la depresión, la ansiedad, las relaciones y más. Realice la evaluación y póngase en contacto con un terapeuta en tan solo 48 horas.
Realice la evaluación HelpGuide es un apoyo para el usuario. Ganamos una comisión si se registra en los servicios de BetterHelp después de hacer clic en este sitio. Obtenga más informaciónBy paying close attention to how you feel as you eat—the texture and tastes of each mouthful, your body’s hunger and fullness signals, how different foods affect your energy and mood—you can learn to savor both your food and the experience of eating. Being mindful of the food you eat can promote better digestion, keep you full with less food, and influence wiser choices about what you eat in the future. It can also help you free yourself from unhealthy habits around food and eating.
Eating mindfully can help you to:
To practice mindfulness, you need to participate in an activity with total awareness. In the case of mindful eating, it’s important to eat with all your attention rather than on “automatic pilot” or while you’re reading, looking at your phone, watching TV, daydreaming, or planning what you’re doing later. When your attention strays, gently bring it back to your food and the experience of cooking, serving, and eating.
Try practicing mindful eating for short, five-minute periods at first and gradually build up from there. And remember: you can begin mindful eating when you’re making your shopping list or browsing the menu at a restaurant. Carefully assess each item you add to your list or choose from the menu.
For most of us, it’s unrealistic to think we can be mindful for every bite or even for every meal we eat. The pressures of work and family sometimes mean you’re forced to eat on the go or have only a limited window to eat something or risk going hungry for the rest of the day. But even when you can’t adhere to a strict mindful eating practice, you can still avoid eating mindlessly and ignoring your body’s signals.
Perhaps you can take a few deep breaths before eating a meal or snack to quietly contemplate what you’re about to put into your body. Are you eating in response to hunger signals or are you eating in response to an emotional signal? Maybe you’re bored or anxious or lonely?
Similarly, are you eating food that is nutritionally healthy or are you eating food that is emotionally comforting? Even if you have to eat at your desk, for example, can you take a few moments to focus all your attention on your food, rather than multitasking or being distracted by your computer or phone?
Think of mindful eating like exercise: every little bit counts. The more you can do to slow down, focus solely on the process of eating, and listen to your body, the greater satisfaction you’ll experience from your food and the greater control you’ll have over your diet and nutrition habits.
Mindless eating: | Mindful eating: |
---|---|
Eating on autopilot or while multitasking (driving, working, reading, watching TV, etc.). | Focusing all your attention on your food and the experience of eating. |
Eating to fill an emotional void (because you’re stressed, lonely, sad, or bored, for example). | Eating only to satisfy physical hunger. |
Eating junk or comfort food. | Eating nutritionally healthy meals and snacks. |
Eating food as quickly as possible. | Eating slowly, savoring every bite. |
Eating until all the food has gone, ignoring your body’s signals of fullness. | Listening to your body’s signals and eating only until you’re full. |
Whether you’re aware of it or not, food dramatically affects your well-being. It can affect the way you feel physically, how you respond emotionally, and how you manage mentally. It can boost your energy and outlook or it can drain your resources and make you feel sluggish, moody, and dispirited.
We all know that we should eat less sugar and processed foods and more fruit and vegetables. But if simply knowing the “rules” of healthy eating was enough, none of us would be overweight or hooked on junk food. When you eat mindfully and become more attuned to your body, however, you can start to feel how different foods affect you physically, mentally, and emotionally. And that can make it much easier to make the switch to healthier food choices. For example, once you realize that the sugary snack you crave when you’re tired or depressed actually leaves you feeling even worse, it’s easier to manage those cravings and opt for a healthier snack that boosts your energy and mood instead.
Many of us only really pay attention to how food makes us feel when it causes us to be physically ill. The question we should be asking is not, “Does my food make me sick?” but rather, “How well does it make me feel?” In other words, how much better do you feel after eating? How much more energy and enthusiasm do you have after a meal or snack?
To fully explore your relationship with food, it’s important to become aware of how different foods make you feel. How do you feel after you swallow the food? How do you feel in five minutes, in an hour, or several hours after eating? How do you feel generally throughout the day?
To start tracking the relationship between what you eat and how it makes you feel, try the following exercise:
Keeping a record on your phone or in a notebook can heighten your awareness of how the meals and snacks you eat affect your mood and well-being.
Once you’re able to connect your food choices to your physical and mental well-being, the process of selecting food becomes a matter of listening to your own body. For example, you may find that when you eat carbohydrates you feel heavy and lethargic for hours. Therefore, carb-heavy meals become something you try to avoid.
Of course, different foods affect us all differently, according to factors such as genetics and lifestyle. So it may involve some trial and error to find the foods and combinations of food that work best for you.
The following exercise can help you discover how different food combinations and quantities affect your well-being:
1. Begin to experiment with your food:
2. Keep a record of everything you observe in yourself as you experiment with your eating habits. The question you’re trying to answer is: “Which eating patterns add to the quality of my life, and which detract?”
3. Continue experimenting with different types, combinations, and amounts of food for two or three weeks, tracking how you feel mentally, physically, and emotionally.
While eating undoubtedly affects how you feel, it’s also very true that how you feel affects what, when, and how much you eat. Many of us frequently mistake feelings of anxiety, stress, loneliness, or boredom for hunger pangs and use food in an attempt to cope with these feelings. The discomfort you feel reminds you that you want something, need something to fill a void in your life. That void could be a better relationship, a more fulfilling job, or a spiritual need. When you continually try to fill that void with food, though, you inevitably overlook your real hungers.
As you practice mindful eating and your awareness grows, you’ll become aware of how often your food consumption has nothing to do with physical hunger, and everything to do with filling an emotional need. As you sit down to eat, ask yourself, “What am I truly hungry for?” Are you craving that “little something to nibble on” because you’re genuinely hungry or for another reason?
Filling and saturating yourself with food can help mask what you’re really hungry for, but only for a short time. And then the real hunger or need will return.
Do you eat to feel better or relieve stress? Do you reach for a pint of ice cream when you’re feeling down? Order a pizza if you’re bored or lonely? Swing by the drive-through after a tough day at work?
No matter how powerless or out of control you feel around food, there are plenty of things you can do to find more satisfying ways to feed your feelings or fill an emotional void. To learn more, see: Emotional Eating.
Practicing mindful eating forces you to slow down, focus on the present moment, and notice what you’re really feeling. And when you repeatedly ask yourself, “How well do I feel after a meal or snack?” you’ll begin the process of gaining awareness of your own specific nutritional needs. You’ll measure meals and snacks in terms of how they affect your well-being. Your purpose for eating will shift from the intention of feeling full of food, to the intention of feeling full of energy and vitality.
Breathing deeply can often help to pacify hunger, especially when that hunger really isn’t about food. Oxygen fuels the body and breathing deeply can increase your energy and sense of well-being. As you breathe deeply, you also relax and relieve stress and tension, common imitators of false hunger.
Whenever you feel hungry, and before every meal, take ten slow, deep breaths.
Millones de lectores confían en HelpGuide.org para obtener recursos gratuitos basados en evidencia para comprender y afrontar los desafíos de la salud mental. Haga su donación hoy para ayudarnos a salvar, apoyar y cambiar vidas.
Done hoy a HelpGuide.org