Mindfulness is a way of maintaining awareness in the present moment to acknowledge and accept current thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations, and surroundings. Using this technique while eating will give you a new way to connect to food, and to notice your cues of satisfaction, fullness, and hunger. 

Mindful eating is just as it sounds: eating food while maintaining your attention to the present moment. It involves using your senses to appreciate the food before you and evaluating how you feel while eating it. Maintaining awareness in the moment means not distracting yourself with watching TV or scrolling on your phone. Doing so will disconnect you from the experience of eating, which increases the likelihood of eating faster and without appreciation for the flavors or awareness of your hunger or fullness levels. When this happens, it’s normal to feel guilt or shame afterwards, especially if you feel like you binged or ate more than you intended. 

Almost all of us have had negative experiences stemming from both personal and cultural attitudes toward food and health. Practicing mindfulness will help you to move toward experiences that are more personally fulfilling and uplifting. 

Mindful eating is important because it allows you to:

Refocus the purpose of eating back to nourishment, satisfaction, and fulfillment;

Become aware of hunger levels and emotional triggers so that binge eating is deterred;

Connect to the physical sensations in the body that initiate or discourage eating;

Honor your hunger by eating when your body needs fuel;

Engage in your senses and appreciate food;

Stay aware of your emotions before, during, and after eating;

Create a healthy relationship with food and your body.

It’s important to remember that mindful eating is not a diet and, while it has been shown to help some people lose weight, is primarily beneficial in healing disordered eating patterns. Behaviors like bingeing, dieting, and restricting are damaging to the body and to the mind. Engaging in mindful eating is an effective way to change your patterns and the thoughts and feelings that follow.

Mindful eating is a skill, and the more you practice the less likely you are to restrict or binge on food. It’s okay if you aren’t perfect; that’s not the goal. Life gets busy and sometimes multitasking while eating is necessary or even enjoyable. Try to be mindful of your actions and your physical sensations of hunger and fullness throughout the day so that mindful eating becomes more of a habit. 

Savor’s hundreds of guided practices are designed to help you activate mindfulness in order to explore your behaviors, emotions, beliefs, and experiences with food. Consider how mindful eating could be beneficial to you as an individual, and extend compassion to yourself as you uncover any eating behaviors that you’d like to change. Self-awareness is vital to this process, and Savor is here to get you started. To begin now, download Savor today from the App Store or Google Play.