Mindful eating
The art of slowing down, savouring, and understanding your food. It can help to control your appetite, reduce cravings allow you to digest your food more effectively and enjoy it more. Mindful eating is a powerful tool in weight-loss and weight maintenance control. It allows us to understand how we feel about food and how the food is making us feel.
Three simple steps to mindful eating.
· Don’t rush take your time. Consciously make the decision to put down the knife and fork or pause between each bite. Focus on chewing and tasting that last mouthful. Think to yourself what does it taste like; is it sweet, savoury, bitter and sour or juicy? Slowly count to ten as you do this or even count how many times you chew.
The act of chewing and tasting helps to stimulate the salivary gland which in turn, breaks down certain elements of foods including carbohydrates and sugars. Slowing down allows time for these signals to be processed by the body
· When reaching for the snacks- give yourself ten seconds to breathe slowly and calmly, think about when your next meal will be and how long away that is. Focus on how you feel – are you hungry, thirsty, bored. If you give yourself those extra few seconds to think and check in how you feel being honest with yourself before making that choice will not only subside the craving, and give you an option to make a more healthy choice but will also reduce the feelings of guilt if you do decide the snack is needed.
· After each meal take time to assess how the food choices you have made make you feel. Do you still feel hungry? Feel bloated? Over full? Craving sweet things? Sleepy? Or do you feel great? Full of energy?
With these 3 simple tricks we can all begin to understand how food makes us feel.
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