The Benefits of Mindful Eating

Last week's article discussed the 70% rule in terms of eating an alkaline diet as well as the importance of cleansing the liver periodically. This week we will highlight the importance of mindful eating and awareness of what we are putting in our body.

Mindfulness is a form of meditation and can be described as the distance between a stimulus and our response to that stimulus. Some people have a shorter distance between stimulus and response, while others are able to take longer and be more mindful to the response.  The cultivation of the skill of mindfulness, as well as the type of stimulus we are exposed to, will vary the response time. Mindful eating may also be applied to food choices and the reasons people eat. We will focus on being physically hungry, patterns of behavior, emotional triggers and how to be mindful while eating with those stimuli.

When we are physically hungry, we need to train ourselves to recognize when we are full so that we do not overeat. We do that by slowing down our eating pattern. The body takes roughly 20 minutes to process food when it enters our mouth. If we eat quickly, we will tend to over eat and feed ourselves more than we need to. By slowing down and practicing mindfulness while eating we are able to be more aware of how our body reacts to the food that we are eating and recognize how it makes us feel (energetic vs lethargic).

Being mindful of our patterns of behavior while choosing food is another way to be mindful while eating. Many people will eat based on a pattern of behavior that we have self-conditioned ourselves into. Some examples of this may be eating while in front of the TV, grabbing a snack upon walking into the house from work, or grabbing food to eat while driving. To make eating a mindful activity, we need to choose to make it an intentional act, as opposed to an automatic act and break the cycle of “mindless” eating. Do this by recognizing those situations in which you routinely grab food and work to make better healthier choices, or eliminate that pattern.

A third way to be more mindful in our eating is to learn to recognize emotional stimuli that trigger us to grab certain foods, or beverages. Stress and depression are two conditions that may trigger a pattern of behavior in which we settle for convenient foods that “comfort” us, instead of healthier foods that will help us. By binging on these “comfort” foods, we may also add an extra layer of guilt or anxiety to our life that we do not want to emotionally handle.

Through the practice of mindful eating, we can learn to distinguish between emotional and physical hunger, as well as make us aware of food triggers and allow us to choose our response to these triggers. The benefits of mindful eating can lead to weight loss, stress relief, anxiety relief and energy gains while we take control of our eating habits by making healthier food choices.