Mindful Eating: Benefits for Both the Mind and Body
You’re probably familiar with the term “mindfulness” - the mental state of being present and accepting of one’s thoughts and feelings. Mindfulness can be applied to just about any activity to bring meaningful benefits in different areas of a person’s life. Today, we’re taking a look at mindful eating and how this mindfulness intervention impacts both the mind and body.
What is Mindful Eating?
Mindful eating consists of focusing on the sensations, thoughts, and feelings about food — with awareness, not judgment. In practice, this often involves acknowledging where the food came from, engaging all senses, eliminating distractions, savoring small bites, and eating slowly. These guidelines help the individual pay attention to physical and emotional cues during the eating experience.
What does the research say?
Considering the fact that mindless or distracted eating has been associated with anxiety and weight gain, it’s reasonable to believe that mindful eating would have more positive effects. And the research tends to support this belief. Here are some of the existing findings:
The slower eating that results from mindful eating leads people to feel full sooner, significantly reduced binge eating and emotional eating.
Type 2 diabetes patients who use a mindful eating intervention show improvements in nutrition self-efficacy and feelings of depression.
Mindful eating is associated with improved digestion due to lowered cortisol levels, slower eating, and more appropriate portion sizes.
Mindful eating interventions are still a growing area of research — and its effects may vary from person-to-person and practice-to-practice. What we can all take away from this, however, is that slowing down and being more present can have beneficial psychological and behavioral outcomes in many facets of life, and eating is just one of them.
