Mindfulness eating: Prevent overeating and truly enjoy

How often does it happen that you are in a hurry to eat. Gulp away. How often are you occupied with something other than food while you are eating? Or how often is there food lying next to you while you are working, like a chocolate bar, and you have finished it before you even realize it. Your hand reaches for some more chocolate or chips and to your surprise, only the wrapper is still there. Actually, you didn't get to enjoy your snack at all as much as you would have liked.

To truly enjoy food and avoid unknowingly eating much more than you think, I discuss mindfulness eating and its benefits.

What is mindfulness eating

Mindfulness eating means having your attention on the food while eating and eating with the intention of taking good care of yourself. In today's society, it is tempting to live in a hurry and therefore eat quickly and thoughtlessly because you have so many other things to do.

This hurried life can make you eat faster and more than you actually intended. During mindful eating, you pay attention to the sensations the food gives you, and by that I mean more than the taste.

First, you look at your food and perceive its colors, textures and smells. Eating is one of the activities where almost all the senses are engaged. Your sight sees the food, you smell the smells of the food, you feel the food when you grab it (with your hand near a sandwich, for example) and also in your mouth you feel the textures change as you chew. Finally, you also taste the food. You taste the sweet, spicy, sour or bitter taste of the food.

Because you are more focused on your eating during mindful eating, you can enjoy all the sensations more and often take longer to eat. As a result, your brain gets the signal in time that you are full, so unconscious overeating is less likely.

Emotions in mindfulness eating

There are situations where you have a special connection with nutrition. Some people see food as their friend and others as their enemy. As a result, food can also trigger all kinds of emotions.

When you eat emotionally, you’re actually trying to relieve stress by eating. This may make you feel good at first, but afterward you’ll likely feel a sense of guilt because you’ve eaten too much.

It can also go the other way, stress actually causes you to eat less and less because you see food not as the solution, but even as the problem.

In both cases, emotional (non)eating may be a factor. That is why several studies have been conducted on how mindful eating can help people who have an eating disorder and, as a result, have an abnormal relationship with food.

Fighting binge eating through mindful eating

Research shows, for example, that people who struggle with binge eating experience fewer binge episodes when they practice mindfulness meditation and mindful eating than those who do not. This study also addressed other issues related to self-identity. As a result, the study incorporated not only mindful eating but also mindfulness meditation and the recognition of emotions.

In addition, grocery shopping was also made more mindful, so the choices of food purchased were also accompanied with more consideration.

In addition, binge eating is also often used to reduce awareness because certain negative thoughts are annoying. By applying mindfulness, it is also possible to deal with those thoughts in a healthy way.

Programs to combat binge eating with mindfulness focus on recognizing hunger and feeling full. Because mindfulness also provides a strengthened connection between body and brain, mindfulness can also play an important role here.

Also, mindfulness helps you not place value on negative thoughts, making you less likely to believe them.

Studies show that mindfulness can help prevent binge eating. A case study shows that it can help stop binge eating and may even help with weight loss.

There is also a case study on how mindfulness can also help patients with anorexia, but researchers do say that more research needs to be conducted on this because it is a life-threatening disease.

Using mindfulness when you get cravings

As indicated in the studies, mindfulness eating also involves learning to recognize your hunger pangs. One way to use mindfulness when you feel cravings is to focus on your body and identify the emotion of that moment.

• Are you really hungry or parched?
• Do you feel your stomach rumbling or are you actually still full?
• Is your body limp or full of energy?
• Want to eat because you're worried about whether you're getting enough nutrients?
• Do you want to eat because you think you have to at the moment? (Like at a party)
• What emotion do you have at the moment you get cravings?
• What thoughts do you have when you eat?
• What thoughts are fueled by food?

For example, an apple can have a different effect on your thoughts than if you eat a bag of chips. The important thing is that when you eat, at least it doesn't make you less happy.

Losing weight through mindful eating

By applying mindfulness while eating, you eat less before you get the signal from your body that you are full. This is because you take longer per bite to enjoy it and the food is not bite swallow away.

In fact, your brain does not receive the signal that food is in your body until after 20 minutes. Therefore, by eating slowly, you avoid overeating too much too quickly and thus automatically eat less because when you eat less you get the signal that you have had enough.

In addition, research shows that mindfulness is effective for weight loss. In a study involving two groups of women—one of which practiced mindfulness, including mindful eating, and the other which did not—it was found that after six months there was a significant difference in weight loss. According to the scientists, this was due to increased physical activity and a reduction in binge eating.

Changing diet with mindfulness eating

It is sometimes said by nutrition experts that it is not necessary to eat less, but rather to eat differently and more healthily. For example, instead of snacking on chocolate, you could snack on an apple. Instead of eating potato chips eat cucumber slices.

With mindfulness eating, you can learn to enjoy a new diet. You recognize new flavors in healthy foods that you may not have previously liked enough to really enjoy. But by very consciously experiencing the taste, you find out the little nuances that really do make broccoli taste different from cauliflower.

Exercise for mindfulness eating

To ensure that you too can enjoy healthy eating, I've come up with an exercise that you can perform at your next eating moment.

1. Focus on your nutrition.

During mindfulness eating, you are focused on your nutrition. Of course, thoughts can distract you. If you find that you wander off and start daydreaming while eating, that's not a bad thing, but let that go away and focus on your food again.

2. See and smell the food

Before you eat, look at what's on your plate. Have you chosen brown bread, or a green salad. Look at the texture, colors and, most importantly, observe the smells as well. As mentioned, food actually stimulates all the senses you have. You have to make the most of that by stimulating all the senses before you eat and while you eat.

3. Recognize the nourishment of nutrition.

Mindfulness eating also has to do with taking good care of your body. When you are eating, you taste the healthy flavor. The moisture in the food, the fiber that is good for your gut.

This part of mindfulness eating really helped me to eat less pizza and cheese, because at one point I tasted that I was actually eating mostly a bite of fat. And your body does need fat, but not that much.

The more flavorful the food, and by that I mean the more varied it is in terms of sweet, sour and bitter, the healthier it often is.

4. Chew and feel the texture change.

By chewing properly, all the flavors of the food come to light and therefore you also cause the texture to change and make it easier to swallow.

Now move on to the next bite and repeat steps.

Would you like to learn more about how mindfulness can improve your life? Then come to an event or check out the courses offered by the Hypnosis Institute of the Netherlands.

Sources:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10640266.2011.533605

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10942-005-0015-9

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195666308006181