Eating mindfully goes beyond weight loss, it’s a core form of self-care. If you’re unsure how to start, here are tips on how to practice mindful eating properly.
Self-care is more than just a buzzword. It’s a full-on commitment to personal health and living that requires mindset and lifestyle changes. It goes beyond just manicures and massages, it’s a skin-deep nurturing of your physical and mental well-being. To take care of one’s self is to practice self-awareness and mindfulness: knowing and listening intently to yourself. It is only through this that you can remain grounded, present, and truly attentive to what your body needs.
And one of the best forms of self-care is done through mindful eating.
Whether you’re working from home or at the office, being attentive to what and how we eat typically gets thrown on the backburner. Even though we know that what we eat significantly impacts our overall well-being, mindful eating isn’t exactly top of mind when we think about self-care.
This is pretty ironic considering that proper nutrition is at the core of our well-being. The saying “you are what you eat” is pretty cliché but there’s a reason for it: your eating habits have a direct effect on your overall health.
Yes, it may not be as physically soothing as a deep-tissue massage, but the benefits of mindful eating penetrate every cell of your body. It aids in digestion, weight loss, stress management, and even mental health.
But unlike diet fads, mindful eating isn’t just about the macros. Its purpose isn’t to lose weight or go on a diet. It’s entirely about savoring every moment and being fully present as you enjoy the eating experience.
Understanding Mindful Eating
Rooted in Zen Buddhist traditions, embracing mindfulness means having a moment-by-moment awareness of the present with a learning perspective. From each lingering thought to every sensation, it’s core principle lies in savoring the moment with an attitude of acceptance and absence of judgment — just pure exploration of whatever it is you’re focusing on.
In the context of mindful eating, the Center for Mindful Eating defines it as the practice of paying attention to your food, your thoughts, motivations, and the sensual experience of consuming it. Gaining full awareness of the roots of health and contentment as you experience your food is the overarching goal, and it’s meant to help you savor every flavor and bodily feeling during the whole eating experience.
Through mindfulness, you can become more aware of your internal and external factors that surround the act of eating food. This helps bridge the balance between enjoying your food and attaining nutrition to benefit your body.
It does this through the following:
- Learning to listen to your body
- Knowing the food that you’re eating
- Enjoying the eating experience
- Making desirable food selections according to what your body truly needs
Mindfulness in Every Bite
Eating mindfully starts with way before you take the first bite, it begins with your food selection and ends when your last bite is swallowed. In between, thoughtfulness and awareness is practiced allowing you to truly appreciate your meal.
As you focus on the sensations of sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste, you’re able to have full awareness of your food at the present moment. Here are a couple of suggestions to help you practice mindfulness in your next meal:
- Before you reach for your snack automatically, take a moment to pause and pay attention to what you’re feeling. What's the reason you wanted to fill up on a snack or food? Are you feeling stressed or bored? Do you feel frustrated or sad? Is it because of physical hunger? Identifying the reason behind the impulse can help you better address the need of the moment.
- If the desire is not driven by physical hunger, try to find a more appropriate solution to fill it. If you’re bored, try going on a walk and get some fresh air. If you’re sad or lonely, maybe it’s time to catch up with a friend. If it’s because of anger or stress, perhaps a 10-minute exercise can serve you best.
- When you do feel physical hunger, make sure to fully be in the moment when you eat. Eat and only eat. Set aside any distractions and pay full attention to your food. Smell its aroma, look at the colors, feel the textures, and observe every burst of flavor with every bite. Experience your food and don’t rush into it. Remember, you’re not supposed to go through it like you’re inhaling it. Take it one steady bite at a time.
- On top of enjoying your food, think about the process it took to get it to your plate. Is it organic or processed? Who were the people involved in the production? Consider the benefits it brings your body and how it contributes to your well-being.
- Savor your meal and enjoy it like it’s a moment of rest. Because it is.
- After every bite, mind your appetite. Listen to your body and pay attention to how you feel. Are you still hungry? Have you had enough? Then, continue to do what needs to be done.
Notice how the overall experience doesn’t tell you what you should be experiencing; instead, it only teaches you to set your focus on your own experience.
Unlike diet plans, mindful eating isn’t outcome-driven. The focus is not to lose weight, that’s just the icing on the cake. Mindful eating isn’t concerned with restricting food intake. Instead, you can choose what you eat and how much you want to consume.
It’s the process that counts.
Incorporating Mindfulness into Meal Planning
Mindful eating isn’t restricted to the act of eating itself. You can apply it to pretty much any aspect of meal planning! From grocery shopping to even chewing, there’s always room for thoughtfulness.
Be intentional about what you buy.
Before you leave the house, think of the next set of meals you’re going to prepare and list down all the ingredients you’ll need ahead of time. Think about how much food you’ll need, what flavors you want to taste, and maybe even a snack you want to indulge in once or twice a week. Complete your list and enter the store with a specific goal: to shop mindfully. Grab only the things you need and resist the urge to get the ones you don’t. The main thing we want to achieve here is to reduce impulse buying and help you stay faithful to your shopping list.
You can go the traditional pen and paper route and manually write everything down, or go for the digital option. We recommend the latter because as you practice mindful eating, there would be some lists you might repeat. Digital checklists offer more flexibility and efficiency plus they’re good for the environment! Apps like Do allow you to group your items together so you can create different checklists and to-do lists, viewing and tweaking each group as needed — shopping mindfully made easy.
Mind your nutrition.
Although weight loss isn’t the main priority of mindful eating, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be paying attention to your nutrition. One way to do this is to incorporate more color into your meals. Nutritionists say that the more color, the better when it comes to food! So, opt for diversity. This way, you get a healthy dose of immune-boosting vitamins, fatty acids, antioxidants, and minerals.
Toss in blueberries in your smoothie, dark chocolate in your overnight oats (yes, chocolate!), or enjoy some purple cauliflower rice. There are plenty of mood-boosting healthy meal plan ideas that your body will love. And oh, don’t be scared of fatty food! Fish, nuts, avocados, and olive oil are great sources of the very important omega-3 fatty acid that helps boost brain health and lower cholesterol. Plus, it’s known to have antidepressant properties.
Talk about a powerhouse of self-care for the mind and body.
Listen to your satiety cues
Skipping meals is one of the many things people are guilty of daily. This robs your body of vital nutrients and also causes potential mood problems and fatigue. On top of this, when people skip meals they tend to end up over-hungry and overeat to make up for the missed meal. This can rob your body of the nutrients it needs to function through the day and leave you sluggish or weak.
So, listen to your body. It doesn’t mean that it's going to be a fixed time every day, mindful eating simply entails being attentive to your satiety cues, eating when you’re hungry, and avoiding skipping meals. For best results, try eating 3-6 small portions of snacks evenly spaced between 4 to 6 hours.
Indulge in mindful treats once in a while.
Most people associate mindful eating with boring recipes, but that’s not the case at all. You can adopt the 80/20 principle where you can stick to your nutritional food 80% of the time and indulge yourself with a treat with the remaining 20% — mindfully of course. This can help maintain a good relationship with food because it reinforces the fact that mindful eating isn’t meant to restrict, it just teaches to be thoughtful.
Best of all, it allows room for humanity and improves the satisfaction you can have with food. Mindfully allowing little treats in your meals can be good for the soul, too.
Experience the Joy of Eating, One Bite at a Time
As you eat mindfully, may you truly take the time to saturate yourself with what’s in front of you. It’s okay if it doesn’t come easy at first. You’ll get in the zone eventually. Just don’t stop practicing means to take care of yourself and prioritize your well-being. The best way for you to be able to love and care for others, is when you’ve cared for yourself first.
