Mindful Eating: Tips for a Healthy Relationship with Food

What is mindful eating?

Mindful eating is the process of paying attention to the present moment while you’re eating. Common mindful eating practices include:

• Sensory awareness: paying attention to the sights, smells, tastes, textures, and sounds of your food.

• Body awareness: listening to your body’s hunger and fullness. 

• Mind awareness: noticing your thoughts and emotions surrounding food, and how they might influence your eating choices.

Mindful eating benefits

For individuals looking to lose weight, mindful eating could assist in multiple ways. Firstly, by becoming more attuned to your body’s hunger cues, you can listen to internal signals and prevent yourself from overeating and mindless snacking triggered by boredom, stress, or habit. Secondly, by savouring the flavours and textures of each bite, you can promote a greater sense of satisfaction which leads to you feeling more fulfilled with less food, reducing the urge to overeat. These factors can help you to stick to a calorie-deficit diet.

Aside from weight loss benefits, mindful eating also can improve your digestion, reduce stress, and change a negative relationship with food.

Research into eating mindfully

In a review of research so far, despite mixed findings, it is suggested that multi-component mindfulness-based interventions may be beneficial for weight management. One meta-analysis found that mindfulness-based interventions are largely effective in reducing obesity-related eating behaviours and moderately effective for weight loss.

Mindful eating techniques

Ready to incorporate mindful eating into your daily routine? Some mindful eating tips include:

Slow down when eating

Slow down, chew your food well, and savour the taste in order to introduce mindful eating to your dinner times. To stop yourself from eating quickly, you could take time to pause and put your cutlery down between bites. This can help with your digestion and give your body time to signal that you’re full, which is thought to be 20 minutes after your brain recognises you’re full. 

Create a calm, meditative environment

Take the time to eat your food without distractions like watching television, your laptop, or your mobile phone. By removing these screens, you can solely focus on the experience of eating. If you have a dining table, eating only when sitting there can be useful to avoid slipping into previous habits of eating in front of the TV or snacking in your bedroom. 

Listen to your body’s hunger cues

Often, people eat when they think they should rather than when their body signals that they’re hungry. Emotional experiences like stress, sadness, and boredom can trigger snacking behaviours. Once you recognise your eating habits, you could take the extra time to think ‘Am I hungry?’ before reaching for more food. You could also identify healthier coping mechanisms when these negative feelings arise. 

Similarly, pay attention to your body's fullness cues and stop eating when you feel comfortably satisfied. 

Practice gratitude

Before your meal, take a moment to appreciate the food in front of you. Consider the farmers who grew it, the people who transported it, the supermarket workers who stocked the shelves, and the effort that you or a loved one went into preparing it. A simple gratitude practice can enhance your enjoyment of the meal and foster a sense of appreciation for your meal. This could help to encourage a positive outlook on eating and could help you to make healthier choices.

How Pharmacy2U can help your weight loss journey

There are other services you can consider, such as our Online Doctor, which might be an option for people who have been unsuccessful in reaching their weight loss goals with a balanced diet and regular exercise and have a BMI over 30 or 27 with an underlying weight related health condition, although the clinician will take into account more than just those criteria. 

How the NHS can help your weight loss journey

Mindful eating can be a useful tool in developing a healthy relationship with food and aiding weight management. If you're looking for additional support on your weight loss journey, consulting with a medical professional can allow you to create a personalised plan, while you can also explore the support available from programmes such as NHS Better Health.

If you, or someone you know, has a BMI lower than 25 and is actively trying to lose weight, they may have an eating disorder. This NHS Better Health article can offer guidance on supporting people who live with an eating disorder.