What is Mindful Eating?

Diets are all about restriction.  Someone hands you a meal, or a diet book lays out a specific plan of what you can eat, when you can eat it, and how long you should follow this set of “rules” in order to reach your goal.  The problem with that is once the diet is “over” the weight has a tendency to come back, because there is no longer a road map to follow.

You may have read or heard the term “mindful eating” when it comes to weight loss, but it is hard to figure out what that term actually means.  Many of the issues that dieters face come from a lack of tuning into certain feelings and cues while eating.  Then they punish themselves for overeating and move on to another diet with a new set of restrictions.

Mindful eating is about paying attention to the act of eating, without judgment.  When you do this, you will find you eat when you are hungry, not for emotional reasons.  You will find that by giving yourself permission to eat, you only eat to a level of healthy satisfaction because you are tuned into your hunger and you honor it, rather than restrict yourself to a certain way of eating.  Food should be something that fuels you.  It should not be used to feed emotions.  The more attuned you become to your eating, the more you will be able to differentiate those feelings of hunger and feelings that relate to other life issues that are not meant to be handled with food.

The process of learning to become a mindful eater is a journey.  It is about taking steps towards becoming someone you love inside and out.  Becoming a mindful eater will end your search for the next diet road map, because through mindful eating, you will have already found your destination: a body you love, that you can maintain without dieting.

What are some things you can do to become more attuned to your hunger today?