Mindful Eating?
Mindful eating means you’re able to eat without feelings of anxiety or guilt. You have no food rules, you do not diet, and you eat the foods which make you feel good and satisfy you. Mindful eating stops the vicious cycle of dieting and allows you to reconnect with your body and repair your relationship with food.
Does this sound familiar?
Does this sound familiar?
- Diet culture has taught you to lose trust in your body and you feel pressured to restrict intake and follow a diet plan
- Your life is busy! You often skip meals and find yourself being too hungry and you end up binge eating and not listening to your body
- You react to your emotions with food. You view food as a reliable source of comfort and pleasure and you often end up emotional eating
The good news? Mindful eating can help to improve our relationship with food. Here are my 3 favourite tips to start your journey with mindful eating...
1. Awareness of what hunger feels like
Are you in touch with what your hunger feels like? Think of things like stomach sensations, mood, energy, numbness, nausea, etc. When you are able to connect to your body sensations you are able to be a better judge of when your body needs food. Also think about whether you dismiss those feelings, mistake them for something else, or let the feelings go on for too long and then find yourself feeling the urge to binge. When you are able to connect to these sensations you will find your self making decisions when you eat.
2. Hunger and Fullness Scale
Using the hunger and fullness scale when thinking about how hungry or full you are will help you become more aware of your body's signals and cues for hunger and fullness. How to do this? When you start to think about eating find a journal or just think about rating how hungry you are on a scale from 1-10 (1 being ravenous, 10 being painfully full). Do be content or comfortable your rating would be 5 or 6 and you should consider eating when your rating is a 3 or 4. Just be mindful of using this scale before, during and after your meals to keep yourself in check with your body sensations and your hunger/fullness cues.
3. Your fear of food
Do you notice yourself having fears about food? This exercise is great to start to working on your fears of food and reframing your statements to reflect a healthy relationship with eating. Here is an example:
I NEED TO LOSE WEIGHT BEFORE I TRY TO MAKE PEACE WITH FOOD."
Analyse it: this is an echo from diet mentality and suggests underlying body image issues. Remember the you are practicing Mindful eating because you want to feel at ease around food and until you make peace with food, you'll continue to binge eat which is harming your health.
Reframe: focusing on weight loss has always failed me. I need to try something totally different by focusing on making peace with food by practicing Mindful Eating and work on improving my body image, to improve my overall health.
Analyse it: this is an echo from diet mentality and suggests underlying body image issues. Remember the you are practicing Mindful eating because you want to feel at ease around food and until you make peace with food, you'll continue to binge eat which is harming your health.
Reframe: focusing on weight loss has always failed me. I need to try something totally different by focusing on making peace with food by practicing Mindful Eating and work on improving my body image, to improve my overall health.
I hope these tips help you to see how Mindful Eating can help you do repair your relationship with food. Here are some other ways you can access a lot more free tips, empowerment and community...
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