The Importance of Mindful Eating, Eating with Full Awareness

Medical Video: The Power of Mindfulness: What You Practice Grows Stronger | Shauna Shapiro | TEDxWashingtonSquare

Eating is an activity that you certainly do every day, an activity that you are always waiting for in the morning, afternoon, and evening. Often, you don't realize what and how much food you eat today, especially if you eat while doing other things. This habit is dangerous if done continuously because it can cause weight gain that you don't realize. Therefore, you need awareness when eating, applying mindful eating may be needed.

What is that mindful eating?

You need to know that eating is a complex process that involves the mind and digestive organs. You need about 20 minutes after eating to feel full. So if you eat too fast, you are more likely to miss your feeling of fullness, which in the end you will overeat before you stop to eat. For that, you need to apply full awareness when eating. This is what is called mindful eating.

Mindful eating based on awareness when you eat, meaning you pay full attention to what you eat, how much, your emotions when you eat, physical cues when eating, and so on. Awareness helps you to recognize and overcome physical emotions and sensations, such as hunger and fullness.

What is part ofmindful eating?

Mindful eating involves:

Eat slowly, meaning you don't rush when you chew food
Eating without interruption, activities that you do when eating, just eat it, not while doing other activities
Eat only when you feel really hungry and stop eating when you feel full. You can find out the physical signals given by your body.
Distinguish between actual hunger and a feeling of not being hungry which can trigger eating
Involving your senses while eating, you notice the color, aroma, sound, texture, and taste when you eat
Learn to overcome guilt and anxiety because of food
The purpose of eating is to maintain overall health
Pay attention to the impact of food on your feelings
Appreciate the food you eat

Mindful eating can help you lose weight

Many experts have proven that mindful eating can help in losing weight and also help patients in implementing certain disease diets. Lilian Cheung, a nutritionist and lecturer at the Harvard School of Public Health has proven that mindful eating can help you lose weight. In addition, Stephanie Meyers, a nutritionist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, also uses mindful eating in the diet of cancer patients in various different ways.

Research also shows that eating more slowly and mindfully when eating can help you deal with weight problems and might also get you away from processed foods and other less healthy foods.

A study published by the Journal of Obesity shows that mindful eating can help reduce weight in obese people. This is done by changing eating behavior and reducing the stress of the participants involved in this study.

In addition to overcoming obesity, mindful eating can also be applied to overcome deviant eating behaviors, such as binge eating. Many studies agree with this result. One of them is research in the journal Eating Behaviors which shows that mindful eating effective in reducing binge eating and emotional eating.

Changing the way you think about food can change consciousness, improve self control, and positive emotions when you eat. In this way, your eating behavior can be more controlled and your plan to lose weight can be more successful.

How to start applying mindful eating?

If you want to try applying it, start gradually. Focusing and doing it with full awareness while eating is the key to applying mindful eating.

The following are tips for starting to do mindful eating:

Before you take food, you should ask yourself if you are really hungry right now? Are these foods healthy?
Eat slowly and not in a hurry
Chew the food thoroughly, until it's really soft and just swallow it
Keep disturbances when eating, such as not while watching TV, work, or holding handphone You. Try to always eat at the dinner table to avoid interference.
Shut up while eating, not while talking
Focus on how food makes you full
Stop eating when you feel full

To get started, try starting to apply these tips once a day when you eat. If you have done it successfully, you can increase it to more than one meal a day. Over time, this awareness will arise more naturally and become a habit.

READ ALSO