Eating mindfully, with awareness, can really help us on both a physical and emotional level. How exactly can we help ourselves by becoming more aware when we eat? As a good start, it is essential to remove all distractions that may take your mind off the physical act of eating the food. Turn off the T.V and leave your phone out of sight. Make sure you are sitting quietly and comfortably and relax yourself before you start to eat. If you like, you can close your eyes and take a few deep breathes and just centre yourself before you begin. How are you physically feeling in this moment? How hungry are you? What emotions are you feeling? Are you under time pressure? Do you feel positive thoughts about the meal in front of you or are they negative? So often we eat on the run - maybe not even sitting down and giving ourselves time to digest the food. Have you ever heard the expression 'rest and digest'? Maybe we are thinking about something stressful that happened during the day or scrolling through social media, watching TV, reading a book etc. In these situations we are eating mindlessly - doing everything but concentrating on our meal, just shoveling it in our mouths and going through the physical process but not even taking the time to taste or chew properly. This type of eating is unhelpful to us on many levels. Eating while we are stressed is not good for digestion either. One of the bodies processes that is shut down in response to stress is digestion. This is just one thing that mindful eating can help with.
So what are the benefits of mindful eating?
- It brings us right into the present moment and awakens our senses as we see, smell, touch and taste our food.
- Before we begin to eat, we pause and feel gratitude for the food we have in front of us. You cannot experience gratitude and feel stressed at the same time, and this has a positive effect on digestion.
- It kick starts our digestion. Digestion starts in the brain when we look at our meal. Chemical messengers send signals to our digestive organs and they start to produce enzymes and stomach acid in response. You know the sensation you get when you think of a food or see it or smell it, and your mouth waters in anticipation? That is your body getting ready to digest that food!
- As we are eating in the present moment, we are more aware of how our body physically feels during and after eating the food. For example, is the food easily swallowed?, Does it feel heavy in your stomach? Are you experiencing any stuffiness in your nose or do you sneeze as you continue to eat your meal? Do you have to interrupt your meal for a bathroom break? If the answer is yes to any of these questions then it may be signal from your body that the food you are eating does not agree with you.
- As we eat mindfully, we are really tasting our food and keeping those digestive juices flowing. We are chewing it more and breaking it down into small pieces. This makes the digestive process so much easier. The smaller the food particles are as they make their way along the digestive tract, the less potential there is for digestive discomfort. As well as this, more precious nutrients from the food will be available to be absorbed into our bloodstream.
- Visualisation is a powerful self help tool. We can visualise a healthy meal nourishing us as we eat it and our cells joyful and happy as they receive the nutrients they need. On the flip side, this can also help us appreciate, maybe for the first time, how certain foods do not nourish us, make us feel sluggish or do not create a good feeling within our body.
- As we eat in the moment, we can become aware of the emotions we experience around the food as we eat it and the reasons why we made that particular food choice. Are we eating it in response to stress or for comfort? Are we even hungry? When we become fully aware of these emotions we start to look at where they came from and begin to address the source. When we eat in response to an emotion we often only become aware of what we are eating when it is nearly gone...the reaching for the comfort food and the act of eating it is an automatic response. This has certainly been my experience in the past. I have been standing in my kitchen with a half eaten packet of crisps and only become aware I was eating it at the mid point of eating it. This was one of the red flags to me that I had to begin to make changes in my life.
- As we are eating slower and we are paying attention to how our body feels, it will be far more obvious to us when we have eaten enough and we are full. When we eat mindlessly, we are prone to over eating. This puts enormous strain on our digestive system and just serves to drive symptoms of discomfort, sluggishness and indigestion. Over-eating also contributes to weight gain which can lead to further health problems down the line.
The practice of mindfulness can be brought into your day in other ways as well, not just while you are eating. When you are doing something mindfully, you are right there in the moment with it engaging all of your senses, truly experiencing it and giving it your full attention. You are not stressing about the past, getting anxious about the future or wondering what to buy your Aunty Mary for Christmas next year. Mindfulness brings many benefits to your physical and mental well being and practicing it can help you become happier and healthier in many ways.
Thank you for reading my blog. If you would like to learn more about mindful eating or indeed any aspect of eating nutritionally to improve your overall health please contact me by email at
katymistnutrition@gmail.com or by phone at 087 6178339. Alternatively, you can head over to my facebook page - Food For Life Naturopathic Nutritional Therapy and Energy Healing and send me a private message.
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