Mindful eating and weight loss
Mindful eating and weight loss are closely related. In order to lose some weigh, it helps to eat mindfully and be conscious of your eating habits. Developing consistency and an awareness of how and when to eat helps you be alert to every single bite you take and, hence, regulate the quality and quantity of your food intake.
Can you lose weight by mindful eating?
The short answer is YES. Being aware of your eating habits is a worthwhile technique to lose weight. Mindful eating should be part of a global weight loss plan because it urges one to eat slowly and be attentive to the food. Using one’s senses to focus on the taste of the food and on the needs of the body helps in cutting down significantly on the number of calories one takes daily.
Before listing some practical tips to be mindful while eating, let’s first start by defining what mindfulness is.
What is mindfulness?
Wikipedia defines mindfulness as:
the psychological process of bringing one’s attention to experiences occurring in the present moment, which one can develop through the practice of meditation and through other training.
Put differently, mindfulness refers to a mental state one reaches through focusing one’s consciousness on the present moment. Developing the mind to be mindful to the body’s sensation while eating and responding to its needs can be achieved through different techniques.
Here are seven tips to be mindful while eating:
Seven mindful eating tips
1. Consider what to eat
Avoid impulse buying. When you are shopping make sure to be aware of the nutritional value of what you are buying. What you put on your plate determines your health and well-being.
2. Appreciate the food
Appreciate the moment and Express your gratitude for food and the people your eating with. It is important to have a silent moment to connect the food with your spiritual side of yourself.
3. Time and place
Deciding on a precise time and place where one should eat is important. Eating at random times and places develops bad eating habits.
4. Eat slowly
When you eat slowly, you make sure that your body and mind communicate what you genuinely need for nutrition. It is a bad idea to ignore the body’s signals and continue eating and filling your stomach while you are already full, accumulating body fat along the way.
There are different ways to slow down while eating:
- Sit down to eat;
- Chew each bite many times (e.g. at least twenty times) before swallowing;
- Put the fork down between bites;
- Savor the flavor.
5. Don’t respond to emotional signals
At times you have to decide whether you really have a need to eat or you are just responding to an emotional stimulus. Sometimes, we don’t eat because we are hungry. We rather respond to feelings of boredom, sadness, loneliness, etc…
6. Remove distractions
It is important to eat in places where you can develop connections with the food, away from any distractions. This can be achieved with the following tips:
- Restrict your eating envirenment to one specific place (e.g. the kitchen)
- Don’t whatch TV while you’re eating. Instead, replace it with relaxing music.
- If you are eating with your family members make sure not to raise controversial topics of conversations or better enjoy the food quietly.
- Put away your mobile or tablet and deactivate notifications.
7. Don’t be judgemental
It helps to eat your portion with joy rather with fear. Don’t take a judgemental approach. Instead, savor the quality of the food and be aware of its nutritional value. Otherwise, one will develop a stressful environment. This will undoubtedly prompt one to overeat or become inattentive while eating.