What Is Mindful Eating?

If you’re like most Americans these days you’ve found that at one point you’ve consumed a bag of chips or sleeve of crackers or maybe a pint of ice cream while watching the latest must see episode of TV. Or, maybe you’ve gotten into the habit of eating at your computer – munching on peanuts or chocolate kisses while creating a Power Point presentation or watching the latest viral video. Most of us, these days, eat not to satisfy hunger so much as due to habit, boredom or addiction. Mindful eating aims to put intention back into what we put in our bodies.

Mindful eating is paying attention to what triggers us to eat — hunger or boredom — and it is about caring for our bodies.

When we eat mindfully we pay attention to how the food makes us feel before we eat it, while we eat it and after we eat it. Eating an apple as a midday snack feels differently than eating a chocolate covered donut, and mindful eating can help you understand the differences.

We all eat for many different reasons than just hunger. In fact most of us probably eat for a lot of reason, hunger rarely being one of them. In this fast paced society we live in most of rarely experience actual hunger. We’re on the go so we grab a premade sandwich at the convenience store to eat our desk. We don’t eat it because we want it, or even because our body needs it, we it it because the clock is telling us it’s time to grab something, anything and put it in our bodies.

We rarely take time to enjoy the food we eat anymore. Most of us can’t remember what we eat for breakfast, let alone if we enjoyed it.

Food is about sustenance, like the air we breathe and the water we drink, we need food to live. But food is so much more. Food is social, food is emotional, food is reactionary.

By eating mindfully we make a point to be aware of what triggers us to want to eat. Are we hungry, sad, overwhelmed, or maybe tired? By learning why we eat we can become more aware of our needs that aren’t being met through human contact, conversation and stimulation.

By taking the time to ask ourselves if indeed we are hungry we can stop the emotional eating that can cause so much damage to our bodies. By learning to enjoy food as a source of energy and power we can be in charge of our body – giving it what it truly craves instead of just guessing.

The next time you reach for a handful of chips ask yourself if you’re really hungry or are eating out of habit. If you’re really hungry take the moment to consider putting something more substantial and healthy into your body than chips.