You might have heard of the concept of mindful eating, and you may wonder what exactly it is.
Basically, eating mindfully means that you are psychologically in the present moment with your attention anytime you eat, and never just physically going through habitual motions.
Mastering mindful eating can provide a real boost to your confidence because of your new self-control, and the results from the actual mindful consumption of meals can mean you finally start dropping the pounds you no longer want.
To learn more about mindful eating, keep reading into the following paragraphs.
One of the most basic aspects of mindful eating is drawing boundaries around your meals. You should get in the habit of starting and finishing meals in response to hunger cues.
Good writers know that every story has a beginning, a middle and an ending. Your meals should start only when your stomach indicates you are actually hungry. Then, eat slowly and deliberately.
Finally, stop when you start feeling full. The amount of overall food you eat this way will be dramatically less than before, and you will still feel full because you eat when you get hungry!
Snacking between meals is another area of your diet that you have to address with mindful eating. This is not as simple a process as meals, which you can make the new behavior a habit in relatively short order.
For snacking between meals, you need to spend a few weeks tracking your eating, making a list of all of your trigger foods. These are foods that you just automatically reach out for and eat, whether you really need them or not.
Once you have a thorough list, start rearranging your lifestyle to avoid these foods, or find healthier substitutes. Fruit, yogurt and nuts make great snacks.
Try and create meals that appeal to the eyes, and also the nose when you can. When something looks beautiful on your plate, you are going to savor it more than consume it.
The eating experience is then almost an appreciation of art as much as it is a physical requirement. You are what you eat, so eat something beautiful.
Heighten your appreciation for the nutritional benefits of certain foods. Snack on nuts for a while and enjoy how fast they make you full and alert but on so little food. Fall in love with how vegetables fill you up without slowing down your metabolism.
Like how beef jerky can give you a lot of protein without hardly any calories. Focus on foods more for how you feel after you eat them than during.
You have to feed your emotions in mindful eating, but you no longer are going to do it with food. It is okay to eat while feeling upset, but not if you are so upset that you can not focus on eating mindfully.
Spend more time with friends. Get a little exercise outdoors. Take yourself on a date to the movies once a week. Do something for yourself about an hour a day so your mind can decompress.
Mastering mindful eating can be a serious boon to your weight loss efforts. Even mindfully eating more meals than not can be enough to turn the tide towards a thinner you. Find ways to be in the moment, and apply all the ideas this article has presented you.
