Photo Credit: Courtesy of Luna Vandoorne/Shutterstock

Mindful eating involves cultivating awareness of both the food you consume and the reasons behind your eating choices. With its origins firmly grounded in Buddhist principles, this practice encourages a deeper connection to food and one’s body. As the author of “LONGEVITY DIET & NUTRITION: Nourishing Your Way to a Healthier Life,” I’ve explored many key points concerning the interplay of food and our overall well-being. Among these, the significance of mindful eating emerges. In the words that follow, we dive into an exploration of mindful eating: an essential avenue toward fostering longevity and embracing a life imbued with vitality.

How Mindful Eating Works

Mindful eating focuses on how you feel, how you experience food, and how you feel about your body. This is done without judgment and with heightened awareness. Various food choices are considered as well as internal and external physical cues, as well as your response to those cues.

The goal is to make meals more enjoyable and to make the eating environment more understandable for everyone. There are four aspects of mindful eating, according to Fung and colleagues: what to eat, why to eat what we eat, how much to eat, and how to eat it.

Understanding Mindful Eating’s Approach

A mindfulness-based approach to eating is part of the broader philosophy of mindfulness, a centuries-old practice that is practiced by many religions. A person who is mindful is intentionally paying attention to their thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations at any given time. By practicing mindfulness, one aims to be more aware of their situation and choices rather than reacting to them when they’re faced with them. When you eat mindfully, you experience and enjoy food using all of your senses. As a result, the experience of eating can be improved due to an increase in gratitude for food. In mindful eating, the goal is to make choices that will nourish and satisfy the body. There are various kinds of eating experiences, however, so it discourages “judging” one’s eating behaviors. By becoming more aware of the way we eat and the impact our habits have on our bodies, we may be able to make changes in our behavior that will benefit ourselves and our environment.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Wild As Light/Shutterstock

Seven Principles of Mindful Eating

1. Give honor to the food. Don’t forget to acknowledge who prepared the meal and where the food came from. To enhance your eating experience, try to eat without distractions.
2. Engage all your senses. Feel how the food feels and sounds and how it smells, tastes, and feels when you eat it. Engage your senses periodically.
3. Be modest with your portions. It can help prevent overeating and food waste. Only fill a dinner plate once when it is no larger than 9 inches across.
4. Be sure to chew thoroughly after each bite. It is possible to fully appreciate the flavors of the food by practicing these practices when eating.
5. Avoid overeating by eating slowly. The more you eat slowly, the better you are able to recognize when you are satisfied, or about 80% full, so you can stop eating.
6. Meals shouldn’t be skipped. Without food for too long, one may make the quickest and easiest food choice, which is not necessarily the healthiest. This risk can be reduced by planning for enough time between meals and snacks as well as setting the time aside for a meal or snack each day.
7. Plant-based diets are better for your health and for the environment. Foods should be considered for their long-term effects. Colon cancer and heart disease are associated with processed meat and saturated fat. The environment suffers more damage from animal products like meat and dairy than from plant products.

Motivations for Practicing Mindful Eating

Eating well makes sense since it has many health benefits, but what makes you choose to practice mindful eating as opposed to eating more in general? It turns out that mindful eating can help prevent eating disorders, depressive disorders, and anxiety.

Additionally, mindful eating may help you lose weight and develop healthier eating habits. The brain is able to reduce stress through mindfulness, which, in turn, lowers cortisol levels (high cortisol levels can cause abdominal fat to develop). A mindful eating practice may also help you overcome binge eating and emotional eating. In short, mindful eating can be used to combat various diseases by creating healthy habits.

If you seek guidance on the practice of mindful eating, book a consultation with Victor Dermatology & Rejuvenation today.