Mindful Eating

The Mindful Movement

In recent years, a bright light has been shined on the importance of mindful eating. Food is Loaded. Those who have no emotions or attachment to food, are hard to come by. Eating can bring up difficult emotions due to dieting culture or your childhood relationship with food and it can sometimes be hard to tease apart the physical cues of hunger from more complex psychological reasons you may be eating. However mindful eating can be the antidote. It sounds simple, it really is but with many emotions entangled in between, separating food and feelings can be a challenge. However our relationship to food is an ever evolving, ebb and flow. To achieve the effortless and flowing state with mindful eating, we have to return back to the practices to keep strengthening our mindful muscles. We will experience moments of mindful eating as well as the times we find ourselves slipping into mindless munching. Mindless eating is not just about over eating, it can express itself as under eating, eating foods we are not craving, eating processed foods or fast food just for convenience and not forgetting how we eat as well. Distracted or hurried eating can prompt you to eat more. Slowing down and savouring your food can help you listen to your own signals of satiety. For many of us the perception of hunger has become skewed by dieting. We have been told what, when and how to eat. Its time to step back into an empowered place with food. The transition can take place when we commit to the transformation towards a better relationship with our meal times. 

Mealtime Multitasking

Mealtime Multitasking, may well be the cause of your mindlessness meals. In a world of time  management prioritising everything other than self care, the world has seen mealtimes as another opportunity to multitask. If you’re eating and working on your to-do list, your body and brain won’t be able to focus on those two jobs. As a result, you’re more likely to overeat and you won’t be digesting your food as well, which means you’re not getting all the nutrients you need. If we are distracted whilst eating many health implications can arise with the most common resulting in weight gain.

Emotional Eating 

Emotional eating is common for all people but especially for individuals experiencing disordered eating. This can show up as using food to soothe and and comfort and viewing food to act as security when insecurity appears in life. If you were raised to avoid wasting any food on the table, that may translate later in life to eating very quickly and having various emotions, like guilt and fear, come up while eating. Whatever our background, history or culture around food, it impacts our eating habits in the present.

Infuse Food With Intention 

To eat with intention, is to eat with consciousness.

In this post we will discuss the concept of infusing our food with the element of intention. How and why we should put thought into our plates, the power the mind has on the food we consume  and the pillars of intention.

There is always so much discussion about WHAT we eat and far less attention is paid to HOW we eat. Intentional eating is based upon the idea that there is no right or wrong way to eat but instead varying degrees of consciousness about what we are eating and why. 

What Is Intention? 

An intention is a thing intended; an aim or plan.

When we break down the concept of intention we can create clear Pillars of intention these can be categorised into the following:

• Self awareness. This is the ability to pause and consider with compassionate curiosity.
• Non judgment. Releasing the need to shame or speak negatively to ourselves. There is no guilt and remind yourself of the safe place you are in, within yourself to be completely honest.
• Truth behind the intention. This is the discovering process of the roots of the intention. Does this intention stem from you? (your authentic truth) or from external influence? 

“Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.”  ― Wayne W. Dyer

When it comes food,

Let’s take this quote and apply it to our plate…

The process of preparing food hopefully occurs with us in the kitchen.The act of cooking is not only preparing food to eat, but providing the body with nourishment, which is made richer by the intention given by the preparer. 

The Word Intuition. Intuitive eating is a philosophy of eating that makes you the expert of your body and its hunger signals. Essentially, it’s the opposite of a traditional diet. It doesn’t impose guidelines about what to avoid and what or when to eat. Instead, it teaches that you are the best person — the only person — to make those choices. Its de conditioning and re conditioning everything we have been externally taught about food and creating a whole new approach to nourishment.  

Top tips for intentional meals

Eat without rushing
Take time to really savour each mouthful. This means you are more likely to notice when you are full and also aids the digestive process too!

Pay attention to flavour
Taking a little more time to observe the individual flavours of your food can be a great way to start eating with your mind a little more.

Prepare your meals from scratch
Knowing how the food we are eating is produced and the flavours and ingredients that have gone into making your meal delicious can really help in the process

Try this short exercise next time you sit down to a meal.

Take a look at the food in front of you.

Pause and consider the roots of your food, where has it come from? How many processes has the food been through, in order to be on your plate in the way is it in today.

Takeaway

We are all guilty of mindless eating at one time or another, yet coming back to present moment awareness and practicing the above principles, can help build a foundation of mindful meals with intention at the heart of them.