How to Practice Mindful Eating & Tips to Create Mindful Eating Habits

As I sat down to write this article, my husband passed me a mandarin orange. While considering my thoughts for the article and preparing to write, I peeled it, admiring the look and feel. However, I became quickly distracted by work. I pulled apart a slice and, without looking, was about to pop it into my mouth and clack away at the keyboard. My husband stopped me before I made a huge mistake. As I pulled apart the orange slices, tiny, almost unnoticeable worms were inside! If I had continued eating that mandarin mindlessly, I would have gotten some unappetizing unintended protein! 

What is mindful eating?

Eating is one of our basic human needs, providing vital energy to survive and thrive. How we eat affects us on physical, mental, and spiritual levels by nourishing our bodies, supporting mental clarity and fostering a deeper connection with prana (life-force energy) that sustains us.

Mindful eating is bringing your full awareness to the food and drink you put into your body. When we eat mindfully, we experience what we consume through all of our senses, including not just how it looks, smells, tastes and even sounds, but importantly how the food makes us feel. Mindful eating means being aware of the sensations and feelings of what you eat —does it make your body feel good, satisfied, satiated? Mindful eating helps us center our experience and even our thoughts on our food while eating, helping us to sustain a healthy relationship with this important energy source.

Mindful eating is not just about consuming what’s on our plate. It involves the whole process of buying, preparing and plating your food, as well as consuming it.

Why is mindful eating important?

The more we do something routinely, the less our mind needs to focus on what we are doing. Since eating is something we've been doing our entire lives, it’s very easy to eat mindlessly. This can have a huge impact on our health and our relationship with food.

Busy schedules often lead to eating while doing other things, such as driving in the car, walking, or working at our desks. Additionally, many of us eat zoned out while watching screens. When we eat mindlessly, we are not paying full attention to our sensory experiences, whether we are still hungry, how the food makes us feel, or even if it’s safe and healthy to eat.

Mindful eating is an important part of dedicating mindfulness to all areas of our lives. It helps us practice a variety of mindfulness virtues, such as nonjudgment, patience, gratitude and remaining present.

Benefits of Mindful Eating

Improved digestion: When eating mindfully, the body is more relaxed and undistracted by stressors, improving the digestive process. Mindful eating also encourages slower eating, which allows the stomach to signal fullness, leading to better portion control and preventing overeating.

• Food safety and awareness. Mindful eating may prevent you from eating something unintended, whether that’s mold, a hair or some other foreign object (even worms!). Paying acute attention to the look of your food in preparation or to the smells and tastes may alert you to something being “off.”‍
• Presence and enjoyment. By savoring each bite, individuals can enhance their overall eating experiences, rather than rush through them.‍
• Reduced stress and improved relationship with food.  Mindful eating can reduce stress and anxiety related to food. Mindful eating helps us to avoid emotional eating, stress eating, and boredom eating — all of which are common habits we have picked up from not being aware and fully present while we eat.‍
• Spiritual connection. Mindful eating fosters a spiritual connection to our vital energy source by cultivating gratitude and respect for our food.

Can do you lose weight with mindful eating?

An added benefit of mindful eating is that it can improve your eating habits and help you maintain a healthy diet.

Studies show that mindful eating improves bad habits that generally contribute to weight gain, such as distracted and mindless eating. According to the Harvard School of Public Health, “Intervention studies have shown that mindfulness approaches can be an effective tool in the treatment of unfavorable behaviors such as emotional eating and binge eating that can lead to weight gain and obesity, although weight loss as an outcome measure is not always seen. This can help you to avoid overeating and make it easier to change your dietary habits for the better.”

Mindfulness in all forms has been shown to improve stress, which can also be a culprit of weight gain.

How to practice mindful eating & tips to create mindful eating habits

It may not be realistic to eat all of your meals with such patience, but you can aim to eat mindfully  at least a few meals per week. Here are some tips to get started eating more mindfully:

• Eliminate distractions. Turn off the TV, put away the phone and focus solely on your eating experience.
• Create a pleasant dining environment. Take time to arrange your table and plate to make meals feel more like an occasion. Are you eating on the couch out of a take-out container, or have you taken the time to arrange your food on a plate and set the table? This extra preparation can help you cultivate gratitude, slow down and savor your food.
• Engage your senses. Pay attention to the color, smell, sound, texture and taste of the food. Take note of how each bite looks, feels and tastes.
• Eat slowly. Chew each bite thoroughly and take your time to savor the meal and the experience. As a bonus, this gives your body time to register fullness, which can help in avoiding overeating. Extra tip: Set down your utensil between bites to prevent mindlessly preparing the next bite before you’ve fully experienced the first one.
• Listen to your body. Tune into your body’s hunger and fullness signals. Eat when hungry and stop when you sense you are satisfied. Notice when you’re hungry and avoid waiting until you’re starving to eat. This mindfulness helps you nourish your body when it needs it, rather than overindulging when extremely hungry.
• Reflect while shopping, preparing and eating your food. Think about where the food came from, how it made its journey to you, how it was prepared and its nutritional value. Take time and enjoy the process of cooking, exploring each ingredient with a beginner’s mind.
• Cultivate gratitude. Improve your emotional and spiritual wellbeing by appreciating your mealtime experience. There are many steps to be grateful for, from how you worked to purchase or grow the food to how your body converts the food to energy.  

Start practicing mindful eating today!

Mindful eating is a simple practice that can improve your physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing. By slowing down and being present during meals, you'll improve digestion, avoid overeating and connect more deeply with your food. As with any practice, eating mindfully takes time. Consider practicing mindful eating for a few meals  each week and enjoy the process of transforming your experience and relationship with food.

Check out my mindful eating tracks on Aura for more inspiration. Listen to Mindful Eating Tips for more ideas on cultivating mindful eating habits and Mindful Cooking to Reconnect With Food to learn how to approach cooking more mindfully.

If you’re looking for more guidance and community support, along with gratitude meditations to support your journey, join me at Aura, the most holistic meditation app on the market, for 30 days free.