Picture this – you have 15 minutes between Zoom meetings, and your growling stomach reminds you that you haven’t eaten since that early morning granola bar you grabbed before taking your child to school. Quickly running to the fridge, you find last night’s leftover takeout, and bring the container back to your desk to eat in the remaining 12 minutes you have. You hardly notice the delicious smell of your stir fry, or the salty, umami punch of flavor – your focus is on finishing up your work before, well, more work!

Sound familiar? It’s a perfect picture of mindless eating. Juggling life’s daily demands make mindfulness practices like mindful eating seem impossible. While prioritizing work makes sense, to do so at any cost leads to missed opportunities for mindfulness and self-care. 

What is Mindful Eating?

Mindfulness is a skill that’s applicable and beneficial to many aspects of life, including our food and nutrition choices. We may notice a disconnect between our convictions about food and what we actually eat, leading us to make choices we may not have in a more mindful state. The remedy is mindful eating. It’s not only fun, but can lead to a healthier relationship with the foods that nourish us.

Mindfulness is “the quality or state of being conscious or aware of something.” When it comes to mindful eating, we’re looking to engage in behaviors that foster awareness around the “why’s”, “when’s”, “how much”, and “what’s” surrounding food choice. 

Mindful Eating Techniques

First, slow down and bring awareness to thoughts, feelings, surroundings, and circumstances. Awareness of “why” we eat helps determine the motivating factors that drive us to consume food. This can range from physiological hunger, to seeking emotional comfort, to celebrating a special occasion. 

“When” we eat may be driven by our schedule, our emotions, our hunger cues, or our visual cues. Deciding “how much” and “what” we eat results from similar factors – our emotions, our visual cues, or our hunger cues. Asking ourselves these questions before we eat helps us build a framework for mindful eating, and puts us in touch with how we truly feel and what we need before we dig in.

Other ways to practice mindful eating include noticing where our food comes from, and engaging our five senses during meal times – all before we take even one bite. Here are some questions to help you engage in this mindful eating practice:

• On a scale of 1-10 (with 1 representing complete satiety, and 10 representing total hunger), how hungry do I feel? 
• What sensations do I notice in my body when I see the meal in front of me? This might include activation of your salivary glands, hunger felt in your stomach, anticipation, etc!
• How did the ingredients in today’s meal reach me? What techniques were used to turn those ingredients into the meal I’m about to enjoy?
• What is visually appealing about the meal in front of me? What colors and shapes do I notice? How does this meal smell to me? Can I pick up on individual scents? What textures are included in this meal?

After considering some of these questions, try taking a small mouthful to start. Let the food sit on your palate before chewing. What tastes are apparent right from the start? What textures? Once you begin chewing, how does the flavor change? How about the texture, or the temperature? 

Chew each mouthful slowly, and keep your attention solely on the meal itself. This latter part is key. As with the scenario shown at the start of this post, mindfulness is impossible with our minds on other activities! When you engage in mindful eating practices, notice how it feels different than a typical meal time – especially if your focus is often elsewhere while eating.

Even after you finish your meal, there are still a few mindful eating moments to be had. First, notice your hunger level compared to when you started eating. While always a useful mindfulness technique, it’s especially helpful when considering a second helping. Pausing after a first helping allows time for leptin, our satiety hormone, to reach our brain. Leptin is produced in our lipid (or fat) cells, and travels to the hypothalamus; when it reaches this part of the brain, it signals satiety, and supports the regulation of energy (or calorie) intake. Mindful eating, therefore, helps reduce the risk of overeating.

How to Begin Mindful Eating

You may be wondering how to get started with mindful eating. When working to create any new habit, it’s often easiest and most sustainable to start small. Consider trying some of these mindfulness practices with one meal or snack per week. Find a time to dedicate solely to focusing on and enjoying your meal from start to finish! A Thistle lunch salad would work well for this practice. Thistle meals contain a combination of brightly colored ingredients with a mixture of textures, tastes, and smells, and are designed to engage all senses. 

Another useful tip when working on mindful eating is to share the experience with a friend or family member. Not only does this make for good accountability, but it also creates connection, and reminds us that food can be so much more than how we fuel ourselves. 

Finally, it’s helpful to try new ingredients or meals when working on mindful eating. When meals are repeated, it can be easier to mentally “check out” while eating. New experiences often inherently support mindfulness, and food is no exception! 

Here at Thistle, we support mindfulness surrounding food, and help with this practice by providing nutritionally balanced and thoughtfully prepared meals; with food prep off your plate, we encourage you to (mindfully!) dig in and enjoy. Bon appetit!