How Mindful Eating Can Change Your Relationship with Food

It can be easier to lose weight when you are eating mindfully. But there are plenty of other reasons to adopt a more mindful approach to your eating habits. Even if you are not actively looking to slim down. From getting to grips with emotional eating to improving your digestion, mindful eating can have some seriously impressive benefits.

Less potential for overeating

Eating at a slower pace gives an opportunity for signals to pass between your stomach and brain. Namely the ones that tell you when you are full. It is all to easy to fall into the trap of eating “mindlessly” and automatically, which often means that these signals do not have the same effect. Before you know it, you have eaten a whole heap of calories and still do not feel full.

With mindful eating, it is a whole different story. Taking your time over your meals and snacks makes it easier for your body to recognize the feeling of fullness. That s a cue you can take with mindful eating. Tapping into your body’s natural hunger cues makes overeating a lot less likely. Another great reason to avoid eating in front of the television!

Getting to the bottom of emotional eating triggers

What makes you crave junk food? Often, it’s nothing to do with hunger and everything to do with emotions. Mindful eating gives the perfect platform to take a step back and ask yourself how you are feeling. You might ask yourself what emotions are playing a part in your cravings. Being super mindful with your eating gives you a lot more opportunity to search deeper into emotional eating triggers. You will be able to recognize patterns and take action.

Trusting yourself to make healthy food choices

When it comes to cravings, you will often hear advice to remove unhealthy foods from your home to avoid falling victim to temptation. This can help in the early days when you are first getting the hang of mindful eating and taking steps to change your eating habits but it is not necessarily something you will need to stick with in the long term. Not if you are committing to mindful eating, anyway!

Once you can get to grips with mindful eating, you can have a whole heap more trust in your ability to make healthy food choices, even when there are some not-so-healthy options in the vicinity. It is about building a better relationship with food in the long term.

Mindful eating gives you more control over cravings and limit how much you consume when you indulge your cravings. Over time, it becomes much easier to satisfy yourself with just a few bites, rather than overeating in super quick time.

And sometimes, you will just lose the appetite for junk food altogether! Slowing down your eating can make you much more appreciative of the tastes and textures of your food but when it comes to processed food, you may not enjoy the reality as much as you did when you were eating less mindfully.

Encouraging you to live in the moment

Do you find it hard to be in the present moment? Mindful eating can be a great way to practice this to a much bigger extent. Tuning into your eating habits regularly gets you into the habit of being in the present and over time, it becomes easier to master. If you are looking for a way to include more mindfulness in your average day, mindful eating is a great choice.

A few tips for making sure that you stay truly mindful when you are eating.

• Check in with your body while you are eating and ask yourself how you feel. One of the best things to ask is, how full you are feeling? When you put this question to yourself, the break from eating can help you to recognize that you might be feeling fuller than you realized.
• Sit down (preferably at a table) when you eat, even if you are only having a quick snack. And definitely keep the devices out of reach. Putting your sole focus on your food makes it easier to be mindful. If you tend to eat on the go or while you are watching television or using devices, this is a big one to switch up.
• Notice the tastes, textures and smells linked to what you are eating. It can help to keep your eyes closed when you take that first bite and let your senses take over.
• Take deep, calming breaths between bites. When you are used to eating fast, you will often barely breathe in between bites. Taking a bit of time to rectify this can slow things down and help you be more mindful.

Less bloating and ingestion

Struggling with bloating, indigestion and other digestive problems? This is yet another area where mindful eating can have positive effects. Eating at a slower pace means there is less potential for bloating and other digestive discomfort. The main reason? You swallow less air and chewing each bite thoroughly before you swallow breaks your food down into really small pieces for better digestion. The end result? A happy gut!

Being mindful has some great advantages! It is a valuable tool in helping you put into practice for healthy living and eating. It is important to note that by using this practice it can significantly help you get physically healthier and build a better relationship with food!