The real challenge of losing weight is not choosing what to eat because you know you should focus on wholesome, low-calorie foods and avoid sugary, fat-laden goodies. It is more about changing how and why you eat. An excellent strategy that may help is practising mindfulness.
What is Mindful Eating?
Mindful eating means that you are using your physical and emotional senses to enjoy your food choices. It helps increase gratitude for food, improving your overall eating experience. As you become more aware of your eating habits, you can take steps towards behavioural changes that will benefit you and your environment. The four aspects of mindful eating: what to eat, why you eat what you eat, how to eat, and how much to eat.
The concept of mindful eating includes the following principles:
- It considers the broader spectrum of the food: where the meal came from, who prepared it, and how it was prepared.
- It includes noticing how the food looks, smells, tastes, and feels in our bodies as we eat.
- It also includes acknowledging how the body feels after eating.
- It involves the expression of gratitude for the meal.
- It uses deep breathing or meditation before or after the meal.
- It also requires reflection on how our food choices affect the local and global environment.
Seven Practices of Mindful Eating
- Honour the meal. First, acknowledge where the food was grown and who prepared your meal. Ensure no distractions while eating to get immersed in the experience.
- Engage your senses. Notice the texture, colour, taste, and aroma of the food as you eat. Pause once in a while to engage all your senses. Also, acknowledge how you feel while eating – whether you feel satiated after a few bites or need to eat more.
- Serve in moderate portions. Doing this helps avoid food waste and overeating. Use a plate with at most 23 cm in diameter and fill it only once.
- Savour small bites and chew thoroughly. This practice can help slow down eating and lets you fully experience the food’s flavours.
- Eat slowly. Eating slowly makes you more likely to feel satisfied or when you are about to be satiated (full). This practice would let you avoid overeating.
- Be sure to eat all meals. Not eating for long hours increases the risk of strong hunger, which can lead to the easiest food choice (usually not a healthful one). To reduce this risk, set your meals at around the same time every day and plan for enough time to enjoy a snack or a meal.
- Enjoy a plant-based diet, too. The production of animal-based foods like dairy and meat takes a heavier toll on our environment than plant-based foods. Saturated fat and processed meat are associated with increased risk of heart disease and colon cancer. So it would be best to consider the long-term effects of eating particular types of food.
Watching Your Cravings
Addictive behaviours are prone to the abstinence violation effect in which you plan to eat healthfully, but you see something prohibited for you, for instance, a chocolate cake. So you decide to eat a slice, but then you feel awful about your lack of self-control. As a result, you feel a desperate need to self-soothe, and you end up eating the rest of the cake.
The secret here is self-awareness. You noticed your cravings, and once you become aware of these patterns, your next step is finding a way to cope with cravings. Mindfulness can help you grasp the craving and acknowledge that you can deal with the discomfort, which can be accentuated by unhappy emotions. By paying attention to those feelings and practising self-awareness, you can observe that emotions come and go.
Self-Acceptance & Defusion
In case you give in to a craving, forgive yourself and move on. You do not have to torture yourself because no one is perfect. This is another aspect of mindfulness training – self-acceptance. Defusion, on the other hand, means practising to distance yourself from unhelpful feelings, thoughts, and beliefs. This practice can help you tolerate the distress of trying to make healthy behavioural changes.
Why You Should Try Mindful Eating
Mindful eating is an approach that can complement any eating pattern. Research has shown that it can lead to increased pleasure when eating, greater psychological well-being, and body satisfaction. Integrating behavioural strategies, such as mindfulness training with nutritional knowledge, promotes healthy food choices that lower the risk of chronic diseases and support a healthy body image.
Eureka Wellness offers an effective weight loss management program with no risks and exercise involved. Contact us today for answers to your inquiries!
