11 Ways to Practice Mindful Eating

We do everything on a tight schedule in this fast-paced world. Be it spending time with your loved ones, consuming media or even eating, there’s always a lingering urgency. But on the downside, we miss out on many small details around us while living our fast-paced lives, and the repercussions of these actions can be more significant than we think. 

So, what’s the solution? Mindful eating! Let’s understand this ancient practice in detail and find out how to practice it in your life in this blog! 

What is Mindful Eating?

To understand mindful eating, it is essential to understand the concept of mindfulness. Mindfulness is the practice of being wholly present in the moment while acknowledging your own emotions, bodily reactions and sensations. Mindfulness can be integrated into any mundane thing in life, thus avoiding mindless consumption. Mindful eating is thus the practice of eating while engaging your senses so you know exactly what you are eating and how much you consume. 

While mindful eating encourages you to prepare your meals with fresh and nutritious ingredients like whole grains, vegetables, seed oils and nuts, you can integrate the practice into any meal, even junk food. In fact, consuming junk food while being mindful about it can actually lead to less consumption! 

11 Ways to Practice Mindful Eating 

Now that you know how mindful eating works and its benefits, you must wonder, “how do I practice it myself?” Well, here are some simple techniques that can be integrated into your daily life and take you on a journey of enhanced flavours, food satisfaction and lower student insurance premiums! 

1. Eat Without Distractions

One of the easiest ways for mindful eating is to eat without distractions so you have the time, space and focus to connect with your food better. So, switch off the TV, cellphone, and any other electronic devices that may distract you while eating and enjoy your meal fully present in the moment. 

2. Slow Chewing Habits

Chew slower and appropriately. Make sure you take time to slowly taste the flavours, take the aroma in and feel the texture as you chew into your food. This can turn your eating process into a whole new experience. 

3. Breathing Before Eating 

Breathing exercises are a great way to centre yourself and your energy. Integrating these practices into your daily eating routine can make wonders happen. Take a deep breath before you start out with a meal to centre yourself and get conscious about the fact that you are now going to have a meal. This will help you stay more present during the consumption. 

4. Portion Control and Intuitive Eating 

Learn to listen to your body. Be in tune with your energy. Understand when you are starving and eat your meals during that window. You can also integrate intuitive eating into your daily meal times and eat what your body tells you to eat that day. But make sure to listen to your body for satiety cues so you know when to stop. Repetition of this technique can help you figure out the perfect amount of food you need for every meal and make portion control more manageable and intuition-led. 

5. Planning and Prepping Your Meals

Plan and prep your meals ahead of time rather than waiting to cook until you’re absolutely starving. When you cook hungry, it is hard to do portion control or even eat slowly, causing you to overeat subconsciously. Integrate your meal plans with mindful grocery shopping trips so you buy precisely what you need, i.e. fresh, nutritious ingredients. 

6. Explore Guided Mindful Eating

Many guided meditation and mindful eating resources are available online and in apps. Explore these tools for your mindful eating practices and help yourself eat the right thing in the right amount. 

7. Meditate

Lastly, one of the least talked about tips when it comes to mindful eating is engaging in practices that calm your mind down. And what better way to do so than meditating? You see, this act not only calms your mind but also regulates your hypothalamus, which helps greatly in the way your body derives nourishment.

8. Eating what you Like

Okay, you mustn't confuse this with not eating things you don’t like but rather eating things that you hold dear to your heart and modifying them into a healthy dish. Like for example you can modify something as white rice (which is a high-carb food) by mixing it with high-fibre lentils to make the dish a balanced one.

9. Not Forcing Yourself to Over-Complicate

Now, this is one of the most important among all the mindful eating tips. You see, the fitness scene today is such that you are expected to be very stringent with your eating habits; sometimes you need to overeat and sometimes undereat. And the problem with this is something as normal as eating food starts to feel like a challenge.

10. Beautify your Food

This mindful eating tip will greatly aid the way you perceive your food and will in turn help you to relish your food when it finally touches your tongue. This way you’ll invest more of yourself while eating because you’ve put a good amount of effort into decorating it.

11. Start with Fluids

So, if none of these mindful eating tips seem to work for you then you should opt for a liquid-based diet for some time. This will help you get in the habit of investing your awareness into what you gulp. And after some time that gulp becomes a bite but the awareness remains.

8 Benefits of Mindful Eating

So, how does eating mindfully help our body? Here are some of the general benefits of eating mindfully: 

1. Better Digestion of Food

Mindful eating includes chewing your food slower and appropriately so you feel its texture and flavours to the fullest. This mindful process of chewing can help break down the food to a necessary extent and thus lead to better digestion of your food. Your body then absorbs nutrients better while avoiding illnesses like gastrointestinal disorders, indigestion, and much more!   

2. Body Affirmative Weight Management 

Negative body weight management techniques that centre guilt or fear can harm humans, destroying their relationship with food and their mental health. On the other hand, mindful eating can be a great and more positive tool for weight management as the focus is more on understanding your body and its needs. 

3. Food Becomes More Enjoyable

When you eat slowly and more consciously, food becomes more enjoyable. As all of your senses are engaged in the experience, the process of eating becomes more than just a mundane chore. This overall sensory experience can help you feel more satisfied and full after every meal. 

4. Better Relationship with Food 

Struggling with eating and food habits is a way more common phenomenon than we like to believe. Many of us out there feel ashamed or guilty after eating, which can lead to a highly complex relationship with food. However, with mindful eating practices, you feel less judged about eating while feeling grateful for the food on your plate. 

5. Mind-Body Connection 

Mindful eating can help you develop a better body-mind connection to understand your hunger and satiety cues better. This leads to eating when one is genuinely hungry and stopping when the hunger has been satisfied, avoiding under-eating and overeating altogether. 

6. Builds Discipline

You see mindful eating not only gives you biological benefits but also trains your mental muscles to focus solely on your food while eating. This reduces the dopamine levels in your brain so that your belly can work towards secreting more bile and Hydrochloric Acid to derive energy. 

7.  Builds Awareness

This practice of mindful eating increases your perception and awareness over time. And the simple reason is that when you devote yourself to a task with your complete involvement, your mind starts to reduce the amount of cortisol inside it gradually. And this neurochemical is like a veil that stops you from seeing the beauty around you.

In the chaos of a fast world, taking the time to honour your food and appreciating it by consuming it mindfully is an act of rebellion in itself. Mindful eating doesn’t just help you eat better and manage your weight it can also repair one’s personal relationship with food while leading you to be the healthiest version of yourself. So, take it easy, breathe and start appreciating the small things!