5 compelling reasons to practice mindful eating
| By Amanda Wilks
In today’s fast-paced world, improper dietary habits are more widely encountered than ever before. We’re all used to eating as fast as possible so that we can get back to our tasks in the shortest time possible. Unfortunately, this is why many people nowadays suffer from nutritional disorders.
But what if there was a way to get in touch with your body and its functions through the foods you consume? Because, lucky for us, there is. It’s called mindful eating, and it has revolutionized the way people look at their meals.
About Mindful Eating
According to Psychology Today, mindful eating is not a type of diet because it doesn’t limit what and when you eat in any way. Instead, this practice focuses on the ‘how’. It entails being aware of the food you choose to eat in opposition to the blind and automated munching we’re all used to. Thus, your meals become tastier and you can even keep your weight under control.
The most popular exercise for this is the raisin meditation. It is the initial step in getting into this practice and it should ideally be performed five minutes a day for a week. It consists of eight base steps which allow you to take in all the aspects of something as tiny as a dried grape before ingesting it.
The process consists of holding, seeing, touching, smelling, placing, tasting, swallowing, and following the raisin. This makes its consumption a journey for both body and mind which puts all your senses into motion. While doing this with entire meals three times a day isn’t feasible, it’s still a good way to get into the right frame of mind.
Health Benefits
At this point, you might be wondering if doing all this has any advantages for you and your daily life. After all, this entire process is a complex one, especially for someone who’s used to sustaining unhealthy and disorganized dietary habits. Here are five of the most compelling benefits that mindful eating has on your general well-being.
1. Weight Management
While mindful eating does not impose any dietary restrictions for anyone, it does help reduce excessive consumption of food because you are giving your body’s leptin supply enough time to communicate to your brain that you have reached satiety. It’s a well-known medical fact that leptin resistance is one of the main causes of obesity.
Thus, giving your entire digestive system plenty of time to adequately process signals and pass them along to your brain helps diminish that, which in turn will have positive consequences on your body mass. Furthermore, mindful eating also helps reduce the tendency to overeat out of boredom or passing cravings, which is also beneficial for your figure.
2. Better-Tasting Meals
Remember those eight steps in snacking on a raisin in a considerate manner? When applied to all meals to some extent, the results taste better than they would if you’d consume it in front of the TV in a hurry. While going through that with each bite is unrealistic, letting your senses take over during food consumption helps you assimilate each individual flavor more thoroughly.
3. Nutrient Absorption
Mindful eating is also a great way to ensure that all the nutrients in your food are properly absorbed. Sharon Brown, co-founder of Bonafide Provisions, detailed for Bustle Magazine just how that works. By choosing foods that are meant to be consumed slowly and are also packed with protein, you feel full faster while at the same time getting your daily dose of nourishment.
4. Binge Prevention
Clinical studies show that developing healthy habits early on helps prevent the onset of binge eating disorder, also known as BED. Another main factor behind the development of obesity, BED can be simply educated out of your system, and mindfulness is a good way to do that.
Instead of chomping down on your meal and then going in for seconds, take a deep breath and go through those eight steps a couple of times to get accustomed to the proper rhythm. You don’t have to keep this up for the entirety of your breakfast, lunch or dinner, it’s only essential to get the hang of it.
5. Clean Eating
As it was previously mentioned, mindful eating does not impose any restriction on what kind of foods you consume. With that being said, it’s still better to eat as clean as possible so that the practice is successful. To achieve the full cycle, you need to be aware of the source to plate cycle, as well as that starts with consumption and ends in your digestive tract.
Conclusion
Mindful eating is first and foremost a sure way to keep your dietary habits under control. It can help you lose weight if that’s what you’re after, but most importantly it prevents binge eating disorder and leptin resistance, two serious conditions that are the main culprits behind obesity.
Furthermore, it promotes clean eating and nutrient absorption, and it makes your meals taste better too. Overall, it is a good practice to try if you want to improve the quality of your food and your life as well.
Author Bio: Amanda Wilks is a writer, contributing author at TheKitchenAdvisor.com and cooking enthusiast. Through her writings, Amanda promotes healthy cooking and eating, hoping to inspire others to make smart choices regarding their own diet. Learn more about Amanda on Twitter.
