Use Mindfulness to Improve Your Eating Habits

When you live in the moment and stop worrying about the past and future, then you can sharpen your focus on the present. This is practising mindfulness.

There are many benefits you get from being more mindful, including when it comes to eating.

Why Use Mindfulness for Eating Habits?
Mindfulness is a state of living in the moment. It is where you think about, enjoy and sense what is happening right now. You aren't worrying about the past or future.

It is not only helpful for your mental health and wellbeing, but also for your hunger and appetite.

Here are some ways to use mindfulness to help with your appetite.....

1. Change Your Eating Habits

The first benefit for your hunger and appetite is changing your eating habits.

In mindfulness, you learn to exist only in the moment.

What does this mean for you and eating?
When you eat, you get rid of all outside diversions so that you are only thinking about what you are eating.

This means turning off the TV. Not using your cell phone, and not
listening to music.
You want to be in a quiet, peaceful environment where you focus on what you are eating.
Concentrate on the quality of the food, the smells, tastes, and textures.

You can learn to enjoy and appreciate food for what it is. For how it feeds your body, instead of eating without thinking.
You are changing your eating attitudes by developing a mindful eating practice.

2. Learn to Identify Hunger
Mindful eating helps you identify true hunger from other types of hunger.
There are many types, including mouth hunger, mind hunger and emotional hunger.

True hunger is when your stomach sends you cues that it is time to eat.

If you eat at regular times during the day then you would likely get these hunger pangs around the same time each day.
But, if you tend to eat and snack as and when then you might feel constantly hungry. This is because your body doesn’t have a good eating routine.

3. Live a Mindful Life
Not only will mindfulness help when it comes to eating and your appetite, but it helps in other ways too.

You learn to value each moment and focus only on how you feel right now.
You don’t stress yourself out about worries of the future or regrets of the past.

Living in the moment is about accepting your life right now. It is about using that to better yourself physically, emotionally, and mentally.

There are so many advantages to mindfulness even beyond helping with your hunger and appetite.
And when you have mastered mindfulness, you can manage your weight and have a wholesome lifestyle.

Heal Your Relationship with Food
Mindfulness while eating is very close to intuitive eating. You are going to change how you eat, what you choose to eat, and how you feel when you eat.

If you have spent years restricting food and dieting then that is an area that you would need to work.

Mindfulness can help with you that.
It is going to teach you how to recognize your hunger cues, and give you something to focus on while eating.

You won’t simply snack mindlessly. With time it can also help with any binge eating tendencies you might have.

Signs You Have a Damaged Relationship with Food

• You binge eat or out of control while eating
• You are afraid of eating too much
• You track everything you eat
• You skip parties or social occasions that will have food
• You tend to eat much too fast, only to have room for more
• You eat during extremely emotional times, whether happy, sad, angry, stressed, or have other powerful emotions
• You limit to the point of cutting out entire food groups

Many people have a bad relationship with food and don’t realize it. They yo-yo diet or restrict constantly and then go through periods of overeating compulsively.
This can be binge eating, or overeating of foods during certain times, like when they are stressed or have cravings.

Mindfulness is going to help you concentrate more on your eating habits, instead of on what you eat.

Join me in my Facebook group -  Being Healthy Made Simple to learn more about how you can become mindful in your eating.