Mindful Eating: Improve Your Relationship With Food

We already have summer here, and with it, vacations, relaxing days to enjoy with friends and family, often around a table. For many people, the eternal dilemma of deciding between dieting or letting go also begins. Mindful eating helps us manage this and improve our relationship with food.

In many cases, a haphazard diet is the collateral result of a very busy life that is prolonged in periods of rest. In many cases, the sense of relationship with our diet and our body has been completely lost. We become aware when problems of being overweight or feeling ill after meals appear.

It is then when we consider whether we should stop eating certain foods or go on a diet to reduce the extra kilos. Guilt and internal reproaches appear for the food we eat … and for those we do not. .

Conscious eating is not just about what we eat, it also refers to how we eat it. It is of little use to us to change the type of food if we taste it too quickly, without chewing enough and without allowing our senses to enjoy the moment and the experience of eating.

Eat more than necessary

Our brain needs about 20 minutes to receive and analyze the satiety signals emitted by the stomach. By eating too fast, it is also very likely that we will end up eating more than necessary.

Chewing and swallowing is not mindful eating. The act of eating is always accompanied by emotional states. When we eat consciously, the emotional state is one of satisfaction. However, when we eat unconsciously, the emotional state that develops is usually uncomfortable, too full, even lethargic.

A study by Langer, Warheit, and Zimmerman indicated that, after each meal, 44% of the subjects thought they were overweight. More than 45% felt guilty after eating.

The four questions

To begin bringing mindful eating into our lives, we will work on attention. we will strive to create a continuum of consciousness. The more aware we are of our relationship with food, the more likely we are to improve in this regard.

Become aware of what you want and should eat before, during and after the feeding process. To do this, we ask ourselves four simple questions:

• Is my satisfaction with the way I relate to food high or low?
• Is the level of pleasure that food gives me during the feeding process high or low?

• Do I eat normal portions of food or do I usually choose a larger portion than normal?
• When I finish eating, do I feel happy or uncomfortable?

When we exercise our attention to answer these questions, we begin the process of mindful eating. Compromising consciousness and our attention is giving way to a healthier diet.

On the contrary, when our consciousness and our attention are distracted , we will lose control over what we eat. There is an exception, and that is that we have planned very well what we are going to eat and also how much we are going to eat.

Emotional eating

Our way of eating is highly influenced by our sociocultural environment, but it is also influenced, and in a very intimate way, by our emotions. Depending on how we develop the ability to regulate our emotions, it can help us a lot to regulate the habit of mindful eating.

We eat emotionally when we are unable to distinguish emotions, both pleasant and unpleasant, with the actual feeling of hunger. Also, the low tolerance for emotional distress drives people to eat unjustifiably and unconsciously: what is popularly known as robbing the fridge.

Food as a coping resource to manage emotions is an incorrect and completely remote way from conscious eating. Food is not a relief or entertainment or an anxiolytic or an antidepressant. This way of using food is nothing more than a fast track that the brain uses to obtain a momentary decrease in some type of vital anguish. The problem is that they are attitudes that end up becoming a habit.

Develop awareness, develop mindful eating

Regular practice of self-observation helps us better manage our mindful eating skills. It is also the way to avoid self-sabotage. The solution is to build new eating habits based on awareness. It is essential to start asking ourselves if the hunger we feel is physical hunger or simply emotional hunger. Begin to identify our emotions and handle them properly.

Exercise in postponing the meal until the moment of it and not advancing it with justifications of any kind. Make a conscious increase in other pleasant activities that are not related to food.

Mindful eating is a skill that can be acquired and trained. When we go from eating emotionally to eating consciously, we also start to feel better because we are taking care of ourselves; We perceive that we have control over what we eat and, therefore, control over our body.