With so much time spent at home these days, there’s probably nothing left to do but to turn to technology and maybe, food. I can’t remember how many times I binged-eat during this quarantine and found myself munching on junk food at 11pm just because I can now. I am a big fan of grounding activities, such as meditation, exercise and even mindful eating but everytime there was something “imbalanced” in my life, I notice myself deviating away from my usual routine. It’s a hard habit to break and will definitely take a lot of introspection and awareness to correct it but…
What is mindful eating and why do we need it?
According to Healthline, Mindful Eating is about using mindfulness to reach a state of full attention to our experiences, cravings, and physical cues when eating. It is basically, a practice that helps us be in tune and cope with our emotions and physical sensations.
What are the triggers of unhealthy eating patterns?
There are a lot of factors at play as to why we fall into the habit of unhealthy eating habits. Most of these are linked to our response triggers and I firmly believe that these can be classified in to two ways — emotional and external.
Emotional eating is the habit wherein we respond to our emotions by eating. This is common to people who are experiencing overwhelming feelings such as being stressed and sad. Many food cravings are born from this too.
The other one is external, which is greatly influenced by environmental factors such as the smelling and seeing other people eat a certain food.
We all know that when all of these triggers are not handled properly, it can lead to physiological problems such as binge-eating or, far worse, obesity if you really cannot control it anymore.
How do I practice mindful eating?
The concept of mindful eating is very simple, but quite challenging to achieve on a daily basis.
As someone who wants to try it out, you can start off with eating more slowly and enjoying your meals more frequently. We all know that in this day and age, with all the hustle and bustle, we hardly enjoy our own meal time and rush into our food, like, when taking lunch breaks at work. The problem with this is that we can trick our mind that we are not yet full even if we already are. Our minds take 20 minutes to process that we are already full and unless we give that ample time to let our minds tell our body that, we have greater risk of overindulgment.
As a personal experience, I think one of the major causes of my acid reflux is probably eating less mindfully. Since I am always the on-the-go type of person, I would usually eat fast and sometimes, when I feel that I have eaten too small, I would eat small snacks shortly after a big meal and my body slowly recognizes its already full. It’s a habit I still am having a hard time to master but thank God for work-from-home opportunities that I can be in an environment where I can focus on my triggers and behaviors more often.
Some useful tips to practice eating mindfully can be:
- Avoid reading or watching from your mobile phones/tablets while you eat.
- Practice chewing carefully, at most , chew your food at least 10 times before swallowing.
- Be in tune with your body. If you feel full already, stop eating. It’s better to eat small frequent meals than few large meals throughout the day.
- Ask yourself, why do you want to eat? Is it because you are really hungry or do you feel certain feelings, such as boredom or sadness?
- Make it a point to drink a glass of water before eating a full meal.
- Avoid or lessen junk foods. Eat more nutritious and whole foods.
I documented some of the foods I ate while I am doing my mindful eating habits. Mind you that during this process, I was slowly trying to get off my mobile phone why I eat. It’s still not consistent and I am trying to break the ugly habit of scrolling through my work messenger and Facebook during my breaks.
Anyway, here is a week’s documentation (with a little storytelling on the side) of my mindful eating practice. Please be minded that I am an Asian girl thus the food preference. :p
Like any other habits, once you familiarize yourself with the concept of mindful eating, it will be more natural to you and in fact, many have testified that there are health benefits by practicing mindful eating!
For me, this is the much healthier way to eat than going for any other diet plan out there!
Simplicity is key!
Kissed by Fire 