Eating mindfully means using all of your physical and emotional senses to experience and enjoy the food choices you make. This helps increase gratitude for food, improving the overall eating experience. Mindful eating encourages making choices that satisfy and nourish the body.

How does mindfulness contribute to healthy eating?

Being mindful of the foods you eat encourages you to pay attention to their smell, texture, taste, and feel. It helps you connect with your eating experience and become more aware of the food you consume.

Cherpak reported in 2019 that slowing down food intake aids digestion and reduces various digestive disorders like IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome). Learning about where food comes from and how it is prepared helps build a relationship with food.

Mindful eating:

• Considers the broader context of the meal: where the food came from, how it was prepared, and who prepared it.
• Notices internal and external cues that affect how much we eat.
• Observes how the food looks, tastes, smells, and feels in our bodies as we eat, and how our body feels after eating the meal.
• Expresses gratitude for the meal.
• May involve deep breathing or meditation before or after the meal.
• Reflects on how our food choices impact our local and global environment.

Mindful eating techniques can help improve symptoms of depression, eating disorders, worry, obesity, and stress. Mindful eating promotes healthy eating habits, prevents overeating, and improves mental health. It can also break habits such as watching TV or scrolling through social media while eating, which distract from the enjoyment and awareness of food.

What are the benefits of mindful eating?

Conscious eating has numerous benefits, including:

• Improving digestion: Mindful eating can aid digestion by reducing stress, a common cause of digestive issues such as IBS.
• Weight loss: Mindful eating prevents mindless eating and overeating, aiding in weight loss efforts.
• Reducing stress: Mindful eating practices like meditation and slowing down can help lower cortisol levels associated with stress.

The benefits of mindful eating are significant, although mastering it requires practice.

The common distraction during eating is using a cellphone, checking email, or texting on our laptop or mobile phone. Please don’t do this while you’re eating; it is a very bad habit for your health. You should set aside some time to eat. Practice mindful eating: think about how the food grew, the taste of the food, and chew your food properly. Also, do not turn on your TV while eating.

Some mindful eating exercises:

• Chew thoroughly
• Eat slowly
• Eliminate distractions
• Experience the food with all five senses
• Listen to your body

Practice these things with your children as well. Parents have bad habits of giving phones to children while eating. Don’t do this. If you do, the food will not be beneficial for children. Practice teaching your children to do mindful eating. Create a distraction-free environment while feeding your children