Mindful Eating - What is it?

When it comes to nourishing ourselves through food, it’s not just about what we eat but also why and how we eat. 

According to Adam Brumberg from Cornell's Food and Brand Lab, his lab's research shows that we make on average about 200 decisions related to food each day but we are only aware of a small fraction of them. The rest are performed by our unconscious mind and can lead to mindless eating, which may cause you to overeat, promoting an unhealthy lifestyle and possible weight gain. Whether you find yourself eating in response to your emotions, environmental food-related cues, such as the sight or smell of food, stress eating, or binge eating, learning mindful eating techniques can help.

Mindful eating can be a challenging topic for a lot of people, mainly because we are sometimes unsure of exactly what mindful eating means. Mindful eating focuses on being entirely aware of “what is happening within and around you” at a given moment. This act of tuning into our bodies and eating without distractions can help us better understand our hunger and satiety cues, lead to healthier eating habits, and reduce stress during meals, all of which can help us improve our digestion! 

Mindless Eating

We can't talk about mindful eating without discussing mindLESS eating. Mindless eating involves looking at environmental cues and triggers around eating and recognizing that you are often eating for reasons other than desire, such as:

• Eating on the run or in the car.
• Snacking while watching TV, phone, or computer. 
• Eating past the point when you’re full 
• Eating at random times.
• Eating from large plates and/or buffet style 
• Alcohol consumption and eating.

The mindful eating concept involves making adjustments to AVOID these TRIGGERS that may compel us to eat unhealthful foods, eat too much, or both. All the triggers for mindless eating are things we may know about and encounter each day but find it overwhelming to overcome them.

Most diets and eating programs don’t work in the long term. Changing our habits, on the other hand, does lead to lasting and sustainable results.

DM us if you would like to let us gently guide you to adopting mindful eating habits and how to avoid the triggers above.