What is mindful eating

Mindful eating is a way of improving awareness of how, why and what you eat, which brings proven health, eating behaviour and weight management benefits.

All too often food is something we grab quickly and eat without connecting with the process, the taste or how we feel about the food. We live fast lives, we have work pressures which steal our time or simply we think we need to be doing something else. We often don’t prioritise food in the same way as we give attention to other areas of our lives. The result is a growing habit of eating quickly and whilst doing something else. This means that we can make less healthy choices and we end up eating more than we need.

If you struggle with your weight, if you eat emotionally or suffer from irresistible cravings then mindful eating will certainly help you. It will encourage you to slow down, it will help you choose food which truly satisfies you and it will help you properly connect with the food you are eating. This means that food is more enjoyable and you are likely to eat less. But mindful eating goes further than that. Learning a mindful approach to your entire relationship with eating means that you start to understand the emotional and situational triggers behind what drives you to seek out food. Mindful eating is also about connecting with hunger so that you can really be clear whether you are eating because you need to or, for example, because you are feeling emotional. You slow down the thinking process, understand what’s really going on and then act accordingly. The slowness of eating also allows your body to tell you when you are full. How often do we eat quickly until the plate clear before we’ve even given it a second thought?

A study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association acknowledged the positive benefits of mindful eating:

“ Because mindful eating engenders awareness of why one eats, it may be a helpful weight loss or maintenance skill. For example, mindful eating skills could help clients to recognize and respond to satiety, or to recognize but not respond to inappropriate cues for eating such as advertising, boredom or anxiety. “

So how do you do it?   With my clients, I start with a simple set of five S’s of mindful eating.  These will also help guide you to begin the process and reap some benefits too: