Mindful eating

There are two ways to eat a meal. The first way is often the most common: we’re rushing, eating on the go, picking options that may not always be things we wish we were consuming or even if they are healthy options we are so focused on a conversation, working while we eat or the drive on the way to work as we eat our healthy superfood breakfast (or the complete opposite), that we can hardly recall what it tasted like. The second way to eat a meal is to do it mindfully. Mindful eating is nothing complicated – it essentially means being present and in the moment when you’re eating, savoring that first bite or sip of tea (and the ones that follow) instead of rushing. Eating can be an opportunity to practice mindfulness. It is not something we can do at every meal, snack or every time we sip a warm beverage; life does make it challenging to do so consistently. But it is something we can chose to do from time to time, once a day or every couple days.

As you will have seen through several of the blog articles I’ve written before this, practicing mindfulness allows us to be in the here and now and can be a great strategy for managing anxiety or the tendency we all have to begin to ponder the past and worry about the future as if we’re already there (and therefore, giving up right now and the safety of the present moment). But aside from this, mindful eating provides an opportunity to really enjoy a home cooked meal or a favorite treat – to savor some of the little joys in life.

As Susan Bauer-Wu mentions in her book Leaves Falling Gently: Living Fully with Serious & Life Limiting Illness through Mindfulness, mindful eating can also be helpful in increasing your awareness of hunger and satiety cues (the feeling of being full). Who hasn’t had some experience with emotional eating or had a bit too much sweets when you were eating mindlessly and regretted it afterwards? Notice that when you’re at a holiday party and you’re chatting up with a friend or a work colleague, you’re often having hors d’oeuvres and consuming much more than you might at home. You are so wrapped up in the conversation that you didn’t even notice how much you ate. This is when eating becomes a secondary multitasking activity and the primary activity is the conversation where everything else fades in the background and you’re less aware of it. When you’re eating mindfully, you’re more likely to notice the signs of fullness and with better awareness comes the power to be able to decide when it’s time to stop.

Bauer-Wu also talks about how a mindful eating practice can help you to look at food differently and to reflect on where food comes from, giving the example of fresh blueberries and thinking of the sun, rain, soil and the farmers that tended to them before they ended up in front of you. Better awareness of what you’re eating and where it comes from can inspire you to choose the healthier options and it makes you feel grateful for having the option to be able to access healthy, fresh local produce.

Starting to eat mindfully can be as simple as choosing something you love to eat and that is simple. Resist the tendency to eat it right away, be curious about it and really notice it first, breathe in the aroma of it, look at the color of it, and slowly bring it up to your mouth and just notice what happens. When you go to take a bite, resist biting right away, take a moment and then take one bite at a time, slow it down. What did you notice? What was different? What was surprising?