Mindful Eating: Techniques to Transform Your Relationship with Food
We engage in eating multiple times a day. Eating fuels our bodies, but it is also a source of great pleasure and cultural exchange. Becoming aware of our eating habits is crucial in developing a healthier, more rewarding relationship with food. Mindful eating is the nonjudgmental awareness of the physical and emotional sensations accompanying eating. It can help you cultivate more awareness surrounding your food choices and eating practices. When we eat mindfully, we take the time to truly savor our food and, in turn, usually eat less of it. By transforming trust, powerlessness, and guilt around food and eating, the path is one towards a more positive body image and release from disordered thinking or behaviors.
You have likely been told to “listen to your body,”
yet emotional eating can leave you feeling out of touch with your cues to begin
or stop eating. Perhaps you eat simply to eat, feeling that food may just
regulate heart space, temporarily or mind patterns with pernicious thoughts.
Our bodies do indeed hold wisdom, and mindfulness is a ground helpful in
rooting that skill set, as we have inherently learned or practiced. When we eat
mindfully, we learn to slow down and truly taste our food, taking in all of the
aspects of sight, smell, texture, and taste that our meals have the ability to
bring to us. Paying more attention to your eating habits and hunger instincts
can bring change. How do you currently feel when it comes to food? Does this
feel sustainable?
1. The Science Behind Mindful Eating
From a scientific perspective, the principles of
mindful eating are intriguing for several reasons—to the point where
researchers have devoted entire papers to explaining the concept. Mindfulness
has been shown to influence nearly every phase of the eating cycle, including
the cephalic phase of digestion, the rate of gastric emptying, and the release
of gut peptides and hormones that regulate feelings of hunger. Various pilot
studies and randomized controlled trials conducted over the last two decades suggest
that interventions designed to promote mindful eating can have a range of
beneficial physiological effects. For instance, eating with awareness has been
shown to reduce the extent of cravings and binges, while diminishing the
cardiometabolic impact of "stress eating." Eating mindfully can also
reduce fasting glucose levels in the blood, from which we can infer how the
primary rewards of the body—sugar and fat—are regulated. Economically, when
combined with resistance training, mindful eating can help regulate ghrelin and
leptin levels and reduce hyperlipidemia, the excessive presence of fats in the
blood.
While the top-down effects of mindful eating are
encouraging, the bottom-up benefits offer an additional incentive for people to
try mindful eating. In terms of mental health, mindful eating has been
associated with a reduction in obsessive and eating pathology, as well as a
lower incidence of anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating
disorder. Mindfulness can help improve body image through changes over and
above recommendations through flexibility, body acceptance, self-compassion,
and a sense of personal empowerment. Emotion regulation is another potential
benefit of bringing awareness to the plate. In fact, the link is so strong that
there are few models of emotional eating that do not draw upon mindfulness in
some way. Although emotion regulation is not a skill that comes with
mindfulness per se, it is the skill that is most consistently improved across
various mindfulness interventions.
2. Practical Techniques for Mindful Eating
2.1 What to Do?
Focus on changing behaviors. Tips are, when picking up
the fork, try placing it in the opposite hand from what you would usually use.
Chew food thoroughly to create a conscious eating pattern. Close your eyes
before taking the first mouthful — do you smell the aroma of the meal? Open
your eyes again and bring your focus to the taste. Note that the dish might
develop stronger flavors as it cools down, so it is a good idea to really
experience the taste before forming an opinion. Leave the spoon or fork on the
side of your plate after swallowing instead of refilling immediately.
2.2 Why?
Focusing on a few simple changes to behavior can tell our brains that a switch has been made. Eating slowly with chopsticks or placing the fork in the non-dominant hand encourages awareness of our eating behaviors. From here, using simple visual memory techniques, these ideas can be combined with personal reasons for change and, at the same time, create a sense of progress. You’re slowing down and really beginning to taste each morsel presented on your plate. Do you grab another spoonful? You may like to try the following techniques at mealtimes:
• Enhance your eating physical environment and minimize distractions such as computer and phone screens, and eating on the run. Eat with others. If eating with family or friends is not viable, channel your thoughts to being with a friend, family member, or someone who makes you feel good. These strategies can slow down meal eating while enhancing the eating experience.
• Set up the meal environment to increase the likelihood of
establishing mindfulness. Creating a meal-friendly zone includes lighting an
oil burner or a candle. This act signals a shift in parasympathetic nervous
system activity, which makes the body feel calm, safe, and nourished. Lighting
a candle will inspire awareness and visually represent your commitment to
eating mindfully. The flame is also said to be symbolic of mental
transformation through understanding and wisdom.
3. Mindful Eating for Emotional Well-being
Mindful Eating for Emotional Well-being Practicing
mindful eating can improve emotional well-being. It can be difficult to make
the time to assess our feelings or emotions, yet often it is these that can
drive us to food. Enhanced emotional awareness gives us more choice in our food
responses and enables us to be kinder to ourselves when we are emotional. When
trying to achieve a more balanced, healthier dietary lifestyle, it is important
to recognize when we are eating because of emotional rather than physical
hunger. Techniques for dealing with emotional eating include: - Developing a
list of non-food strategies that can soothe you when you are experiencing
strong emotions, such as a bath, a walk, or a visit to a friend; - Scheduling
and adhering to regular meal times to relieve as much stress as possible; -
Preparing lunch or snacks the evening before; - Practicing mindfulness and
being more accepting if you have not been able to make more helpful food
choices. Consider when you have acted in line with your values, rather than
when your food selection has been driven by emotion. In terms of emotional
well-being and our relationship with food, the ways in which we choose to eat
ultimately have an impact on the choices that we make. If we are under constant
pressure and thus stressed, many of us will not even take the time to eat, let
alone make a decent food choice. With stress affecting us in such diverse ways,
from hormone and brain function levels to what we choose to eat, practicing
mindful eating can greatly reduce the body’s stress response by engaging the
parasympathetic nervous system. As a result, one of mindful eating's many
promoters suggests that mindful eating can be a great place to start in order
to make peace with your eating and to end yo-yo dieting. It is not just how we
eat that reflects on our stressful lifestyle; our choice of food may also be
affected by the pressures that we are under. When we are feeling vulnerable, we
may reach for food as an ally, or we may be less choosy about what we eat.
Using specific techniques to combat emotional eating in conjunction with
mindful eating is found to be more effective than just using diet or exercise
to change eating behavior. When we eat in a mindful state, we become more aware
and can tune in to our body’s requirements more easily. We can begin to
understand the feelings of hunger and fullness, delve deeper into our feelings,
and look for non-food solutions to calm, nourish, and care for ourselves, and
ultimately begin to improve our relationship with our bodies. Increasing
emotional awareness about how our choices are driven by our emotions also makes
us better equipped to make changes. Mindfulness may increase our
self-compassion and lessen self-criticism related to emotional eating in
particular, especially if it takes place in collaboration with a support group.
Everyone is present in the face of adversity and challenges, and so practicing
the skills of mindfulness of the body and practice of breath meditation can
also facilitate mindfulness when making food choices, which can be particularly
useful in overcoming comfort eating. Mindful eating also involves savoring
food, which has effects on decreasing the stress response. In short, eating
mindfully and being present to process the eating can help to indulge your
appetite. This increases your connection with the psychological and
physiological circumstances of eating, such as increasing satiety, because
taking pleasure in eating may calm the stress response, improving digestion and
metabolizing food efficiently.
4. Incorporating Mindful Eating into Daily Life
Practicing mindful eating when living a busy life can
be somewhat challenging. It is common to be caught up juggling responsibilities
and expectations, making it quite difficult to find both the time and mental
capacity to pause, take a deep breath, and focus on the simple act of eating.
However, there are plenty of practical ways to incorporate mindful eating into
your daily life. Whether you are at home, work, or in a social setting, the
following techniques are designed to guide you on your mindful eating journey.
To further integrate mindful eating into your life,
make your food and environment work for you. Share delicious, nourishing food
and cultivate a healthy relationship with friends, family, and the community.
Make family dinner a sacred time to connect. If possible, cultivate these
relationships by inviting friends and family to join a weekly group meal. Food
can be wonderful. In fact, our bodies need it in order to function and thrive.
Take a moment to celebrate your hungry, healthy body and give it something to
eat. Prepare specific meals you enjoy. Take time to thoughtfully prepare the
meal, and thus enjoy the process during preparation and the taste and company
during consumption. Furthermore, be patient with yourself, as it can take time
to foster new behaviors and habits. You will discover your own mindful eating
practices and daily habits. Assess any struggles or adaptations you would like
to make and give yourself some credit for your efforts. Since mindful eating
focuses on the quality of the overall experience, not just the mechanical
motions of chewing, ensure that the meal experience is just as pleasurable as
the food you so carefully prepared.