What is Mindful Eating?
What is mindful eating?
We all know what eating is, so let’s talk about what mindful is. Being mindful means, “focusing one's awareness on the present moment, especially as part of a therapeutic or meditative technique,” according to google’s definition.
Despite the picture, you do not need to go to India, the Bahamas, watch the sunrise, or anywhere fancy and sit any fancy way in order to start meditating and/or being mindful.
Let’s practice being mindful right now.
What are 5 things you can see?
What are 4 things you can hear?
What are 3 things you can feel?
What are 2 things you can smell?
What is 1 thing you can taste?
Take a moment or two to go through each of these things and use as many details as you can to describe them to yourself.
In the exercise above, we engaged all 5 of our senses.
When we mindfully eat, we engage all of our senses in a similar way. It is encouraged to start with a singular, solid color food - like a carrot.
Before you even pick up the carrot, what does it look like? Orange is the obvious answer, but try to go a little deeper. What shape? What does it contrast? What does it resemble?
Ok, now pick up the carrot. Before you eat it, hold the carrot in your hand. What do you feel? Also take a closer look now that it is closer to your eyes. I was surprised at all the lines and different shades of orange I saw the first time that I did this.
Almost time to eat the carrot! For now, just place it on your tongue. Don’t chew. What happens? For extra fun, try doing this with a ritz cracker and feel the difference between how your mouth salivates and starts to break the cracker down versus the carrot.
After a moment, slowly start to chew. What does it taste like? Do you even like carrots?
Woo! You just mindfully ate a carrot.
What was the point of that?
One benefit of mindful eating is that it is so much easier for me to mindfully eat a meal I cooked with ingredients I bought from local farmers (shoutout to Beachtree, Griggstown, and Cherry Grove right here in Central NJ), compared to Oreos, for instance. Don’t get me wrong, I love Oreos. But I have never eaten a sleeve of Oreos mindfully.
…Challenge accepted? Anyone? Gotta make it double stuf though.
Speaking of local farms, when you are ready to level up even more, the next step is to know where your food comes from. Environmental health impacts individual health. Further questions to incorporate into mindful eating that will shed light on this are, “where did my food come from?" “How did it get from where it came from to my plate?”
Another benefit of mindful eating is slowing down to eat. By slowing down to eat, if you read my last blog post you already know a few benefits such as helping your digestion. More specifically, it will cause less bloating, help acid reflux, and less discomfort. Slowing down to eat will also help you focus on the present more. You will also be able to feel when your body is telling you that it is full.
How many times have you ate a meal with your mind racing about all the things you have to get done or the big game coming up? In fact, you probably did not even eat the meal because you had all those things to get done, or were too nervous about the game. If you ate the meal, you definitely did not taste the meal. I’ve done this many times myself. Mindful eating helps calm those nerves down, and allows you to go back into your work or prepare for the game with a better mindset, leading to a better performance. I’ve also done this many times myself. I am always more fulfilled when I have my meals this way.
There are plenty more benefits of mindful eating. One more I will write about here is it can help you be more aware of your relationship with food or food habits. Are you actually hungry or are you just reaching for the most stuf Oreos because you are bored? Or procrastinating? There is nothing wrong with doing this from time to time. I do it myself. However, when I am practicing mindful eating more regularly, I am more aware of why I am doing this and it causes me to take an action that will be better for my mental health at the time.
One more... mindful eating will bring awareness to how you feel before, during, and after you eat. Not only will it bring awareness to how you feel physically after you eat certain foods, but what I mean by taking an action better for my mental health is bringing awareness to how I feel mentally as well. If I eat those most stuf Oreos, I will not have the energy or focus to write this blog post as best I can. And then, I will probably eat more of them, feel lethargic, and not even write this blog post.
Have you ever practiced mindful eating? What are the benefits you get from it? Does your mindful eating look different than what I described above? Let me know in the comments, or take a pic and tag me on insta @thebettercoach
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