Much of the conversation surrounding weight and obesity revolves around calories, food choices and diets. When tackling the topic of healthy eating, we often pay a lot of attention to what we eat, but less attention is given to how we eat. This week, we encourage you to shift your focus to the latter.
Our feelings and attitudes towards what, when and how we eat greatly influence our mental and physical well-being. Mindful eating is a practice that focuses on how we eat, from our food preferences to determining when we are hungry and full.
Mindful eating is not a diet, but rather a practice that focuses on fostering a healthy relationship with food and eating. Mindful eaters pay close attention to when they are hungry and full, what kinds of foods they like or dislike and why, and how meals make them feel.
The Center for Mindful Eating offers a simple list to describe what mindful eating means:
- Allowing yourself to become aware of the positive and nurturing opportunities that are available through food selection and preparation by respecting your own inner wisdom.
- Using all your senses in choosing to eat food that is both satisfying to you and nourishing to your body.
- Acknowledging responses to food (likes, dislikes or neutral) without judgment.
- Becoming aware of physical hunger and satiety cues to guide your decisions to begin and end eating.
Practicing mindful eating has tons of benefits. By slowing down when it comes to food, mindful eaters often avoid eating when they are not actually hungry, or overeating when they are.