Whether your goal is fat loss, muscle gain or improving your relationship with food, mindful eating can play a role in helping you to achieve it.
Mindful eating focuses on your eating experiences, sensations in your body, thoughts and feelings around food. You eat without distraction and with heightened awareness and always without judgment.
We often sit and eat with so many distractions around us, the TV, our phone, or working while we eat. This causes us to eat mindlessly and before we know it we are often over full or feel dissatisfied because we ate so quickly the food was gone before we could truly enjoy it.
Mindful eating allows us to focus on the food, how it feels, how it tastes and how your body feels as you eat more. Here are my top tips to give mindful eating a try.
- Sit and eat one meal per day without distraction. No phone, no work, no TV. Conversations and sitting with others is totally fine.
- Sit at a table and chair where you feel comfortable.
- Before you start your meal, take note of how your body feels. Does your tummy feel empty? Is it rumbling? Do you feel tired?
- Look at the food you’re about to eat. How does it smell? How does it look? What are you looking forward to?
- Once the food is in your mouth, think about how it feels in your mouth. How does it taste? What are the textures like? Is it warm or cold?
- Ensure you chew your food multiple times before swallowing and try to put your cutlery down in between mouthfuls
- Half way through your meal, reassess how your body feels. Is it feeling more full? Is your tummy bloated? Are you feeling full? Are you still hungry? Do you feel satisfied? Does the food still taste good?
- Repeat this process for the second part of your meal. If you feel hungry enough to eat the whole thing, eat it all without guilt. If you feel full with only one forkful to go, leave that one forkful! It isn’t a waste if that one forkful is going to make you feel uncomfortably full.
- Once you have finished eating, again think about how your body feels now. Are you satisfied? Have you got more energy? Do you feel comfortably full? What did you enjoy about the meal?
This may feel like a long process but you only really need to check in with yourself throughout your meal to see how you are feeling. You can start with one or two questions and build from there. There is no real right or wrong way, just try to be a little more mindful each time you give this a go and see how you get on. The more in tune you become with your body and its needs, the more you will be able to fuel your body well with the things it needs.
Coach Sarah
