What Is Mindful Eating and Why Is It Important for Your Mental Health?

Mindful eating is a technique centered around mindfulness. Eating mindfully makes you more aware of your sensations, hunger levels, and more.

The spiral in which you feel the need to control your body shape or size is nasty and will often come with hidden costs. The expense that dieting has on your physical and mental health is a hefty one! Dieting can lead to the development of an eating disorder, disordered eating, fatigue, irritability, hormonal imbalance, weight cycling, headaches, anxiety, and more.

Respecting and trusting your body are powerful tools. They are not easy to achieve, but they are worth it. The way you treat your body—including the self-talk you engage with and the food you put in your body—has a lasting impact that can be incredibly positive for mental and physical health.

But how do you shift your self-talk? How do you start eating foods that feel good emotionally AND physically? How do you even begin to trust what your body is telling you? Learning more about mindful eating is a great place to start.

What is mindful eating?

Unfortunately, in today's world, there is too much focus on restrictions, and that can lead to a negative relationship with food. Crash diets of all forms keep trending from time to time, making people think that they need to starve themselves to become fitter. No one thinks that eating french fries will make them healthier. So, most of us already know what constitutes a healthy diet.

Mindful eating takes a different approach. It looks at the 'why' of eating and not the 'what.' It's easy to forget that our bodies have cues that tell us if we are hungry because we have stopped listening to them.

For instance, in America, we tend to serve food in large portions. Research shows that when presented with large quantities, we eat much more than we need to. Even the sight and smell of food can make us think that we are hungrier than we really are.

Mindful eating can help enhance well-being and happiness! (Photo via Pexels/ Rodnae Productions)

A technique called the hunger scale can help us monitor our eating. Before you sit down to eat, think about a scale from one to five. One being starving and five being neither hungry nor full.

Our goal before eating is to be around 3. We are hungry, but we are not just going to eat for the sake of it. So when we start eating, imagine the scale going up to ten. Ten on the scale refers to being stuffed.

During the meal, the goal is to stop around seven. For many, this may be hard at first, and you may find that you may have food on your plate when you reach seven, but over time as you start listening to your bodily cues, you'll learn to gauge how much food you need to fill you up.

Why is mindful eating important for mental health?

Mindful eating helps you differentiate between emotional eating and being truly hungry. It is easier to identify your food triggers when you eat this way. When you become aware of your triggers, you can choose your response. A licensed therapist can help you unpack this new knowledge about yourself.

Studies have shown that mindful eating can help lower the severity and frequency of binge episodes. It can also eliminate unhealthy eating behaviors such as emotional and external eating. Emotional eating occurs when you eat as a result of uncomfortable emotions. External eating happens when you feel the need to eat because of your surroundings.

Focusing on food can enhance other areas of your life. (Photo via Pixabay/ Mediamodifier)

Research has shown that mindful eating can help with weight control and maintenance. More importantly, it can result in greater acceptance and awareness of our choices, increased self-esteem, and generally more positivity around food. Recently, it has also been found that you are more likely to stick to mindful eating than people on a traditional, restrictive diet.

You may learn to relish your food and eating experience by paying close attention to how you feel while you eat, including the texture and flavors of each mouthful, your body's signals of hunger and fullness, and how various foods affect your energy and mood.

By paying attention to your food intake, you can improve your digestion, eat less and feel fuller for longer, and make more informed food decisions in the future. It can also assist you in breaking bad eating-related habits.

Takeaway

Mindful eating can enhance any eating pattern. According to research, it can improve one's psychological well-being, boost one's enjoyment when eating, and satisfy one's body.

Combining nutritional knowledge with behavioral interventions like mindfulness training can result in healthy eating choices that lower the risk of chronic diseases, foster a more enjoyable mealtime experience, and support a positive body image.

Like meditation, mindful eating doesn't require you to do it perfectly every time. The important thing is that you are making an effort to be a little mindful every day.

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Janvi is a counselor with a master's degree in applied psychology with a specialization in clinical psychology.