Mindfulness is a term that encompasses the act of being aware and focused on your thoughts, emotions and senses in the moment. Mindful eating involves using all of your senses when around food and eating to experience the pleasure and joy that food can provide. This can help to improve the eating experience as we nourish our body, feeling a sense of gratitude for the food.
Mindful eating is great to allow someone to make food choices based on what will be satisfying and enjoyable, whilst discouraging judging or disordered eating behaviours. If you are able to be more mindful about your food experiences and choices, you will be able to improve your eating behaviour that can benefit your overall health and wellbeing for the long term.
Why should I try mindful eating?
In the environment we live in today, we are constantly presented with an abundance of food choices. As well as this, convenience and distraction have made it common to eat on the go, standing up, even whilst watching tv and being on our phones.
The act of eating itself has become a mindless activity, often quickly experienced and quickly over, just another part of our day to day. This can be an issue as it doesn’t allow the body time to process that we have taken in food and energy and that we are satisfied and content.
This can often mean an increased likelihood to eat more, as you are not listening to your hunger levels of how much you need to eat in that moment. This can also lead to habits of eating fast, and possible common side effects of bloating, gas and indigestion.
However, eating mindfully allows you to put your attention into the act of eating to slow down, making your food choices intentional rather than automatic. It will allow you to understand better what are the reasons you eat – are they due to physical hunger, or emotional? This will inform you better on how to manage triggers that make you want to eat when you are not physically hungry, allowing you to feel in control about your food choices. It promotes better digestive health and eating until you feel comfortable, better managing your bodies energy requirements in the long term.
What does mindful eating involve?
The focus on mindful eating is to use your body sensations, thoughts and feelings around food, without judgment. Close attention should be paid on the eating experience as a whole, with external cues also being taken into consideration.
The main goal is to allow a more enjoyable eating experience, thinking about why we eat, what we are eating and how much we are eating. When someone is able to pay closer attention on how the foods make them feel, it can help them understand better why they are eating the food – is it physical hunger, or for another reason, such as emotional hunger? Over time, this can support someone who may have disordered eating or binge eating disorder, and even possibly lead to weight loss. However, the concept of mindful eating is not based on the principles that it encourages weight loss, though this can sometimes be a side effect of being more aware and present of food choices.
Overall, mindful eating can allow you to:
- Listen to your physical hunger and fullness cues
- Understand the difference between true hunger triggers and other types of hunger, such as emotional and environmental, internal and external cues of why we eat
- Engage your senses around the smells, texture, feels and flavours of the foods
- Eat slowly in the moment, without distraction
- Learn to stop eating when feeling comfortable and lightly satisfied
- Manage better with the anxiety around eating and food choices
- Notice the influence that eating certain foods has on your body
- Learn to appreciate eating and foods
- Maintain a healthy and balanced relationship with eating and your food choices
If you want to understand more about how you can start to incorporate mindful eating into your daily life, read on!
What are the practices of mindful eating?
There are several steps involved in the practice of mindful eating. You may find it helpful to watch an online video that explains the principles, especially if you are a visual learner. Check out our own video on mindful eating posted on our Instagram page here.
Practice is key, so take the opportunity to practice these steps as much as possible every time you choose to eat, to allow yourself to become more familiar with these principles going forwards.
- Take a food item and place it in a plate or a bowl. Spend a moment to acknowledge the sounds around you, as well as the colours and smells that are coming from the food.
- Be sure to choose an environment with no noise distraction, no music, tv or phones.
- Pick the food up either with your hands or cutlery, and have a closer smell. How does that make you feel – hungry and excited perhaps? Take a small bite of the food and before chewing, just notice first how the food feels in the mouth. What is the texture like?
- Then take small slow bites, relaxing and taking your time to chew and experience what the food feels like in the mouth.
- Pause to engage the senses, taking small bites and chewing completely before swallowing. What does the food taste like, what textures do you feel, are you enjoying the flavours and feelings of eating it, or perhaps not?
- Focus on how the food makes you feel. Are you noticing that you are becoming satisfied and content? Ideally practice stopping eating when you feel 80% full and comfortable.
It can feel a bit strange the first few times you practice, but keep up the practice at every opportunity possible to help you understand better the ways to fully listen to your senses and hunger cues.
Ideally, don’t go too long without eating, as this can increase hunger levels, making it much harder to eat slowly and choose healthier food options.
What is the research behind mindful eating?
One study published in 2022 showed that practicing mindful approaches to eating can support in the management of emotional eating and binge eating, although no significant weight loss was seen.
Mindful eating can also support someone with body weight/shape concerns and reduces eating disorder psychopathology. This was found from a 2019 review of 15 mindful eating studies, that showed significant positive associations between mindful eating techniques and reduced binge eating, less eating in the absence of hunger and reduced dietary constraint. They also found a decrease in body mass index (BMI) in some studies.
As well as this, a 2017 structured literature review of 68 publications found that mindfulness based eating approaches are most effective in addressing binge eating, emotional eating and eating in response to external cues. Some of these studies reported reduced food intake in the overweight and obese populations, which may prevent weight gain – however this was not seen as such in the studies with normal-weight participants. The mindful eating concept can help people increase their awareness of internal cues to eat, which can address the problematic eating behaviours that are frequently found by many, when controlling food intake.
Another study that looked specifically at almost 200 obese adults found that a mindful eating intervention helped to significantly reduce sweet intake and maintain their levels of fasting blood glucose, compared to the control group who showed increased fasting blood glucose.
Although there is no one standard recognised protocol for mindful eating, additional research is needed to look at what behaviours determine mindful eating practice to allow a more standardised approach in future research. The studies shown so far are promising and have been able to demonstrate that taking a more mindful approach to eating can support long term health and wellbeing.
What are the downsides to mindful eating?
Although there are not specific negatives to mindful eating, it is worth keeping in mind that it is not a replacement for traditional treatment for more severe clinical conditions, such as eating disorders. Mindfulness can support as part of a treatment plan, however it should not be used as the only treatment pathway.
Mindful eating is also not designed to specifically lead to weight loss. It is more to allow people to embrace enjoyment of food choice and pleasure of the eating, whilst working on being more in tune with your bodies hunger signals. It can be involved in a weight loss programme and weight loss may sometimes be seen as a side effect of practicing mindful eating, but it is not guaranteed.
Focusing on mindful eating allows us to improve our behaviour around eating and food choices, allowing us to feel comfortable with eating and being able to stop when content and satisfied, without placing guilt or restriction on foods. If you are looking to understand more about mindful eating, perhaps to see how this may also help with your relationship with food or support you on your weight loss journey, then speak to our weight loss dietitian today.
