On Eating Mindfully

Do anything three times a day, every day of your life, and you’re bound to get bored. Eating is no different. Humans, however, are masters of distraction — which is how our screens became our most loyal dining companions. But that can get in the way of a healthy diet and a healthy weight in ways you may not realize.

Change How We Eat

Simply changing how we eat might be a key to weight loss. Mindful practices like meditation are being used as tools to improve health, lessen pain and dodge sickness in large part because they reduce stress. And since stress is often at the root of overeating, mindfulness seems to make us eat better meals, which means it’s likely possible to lose weight without dieting.

Mindful Eating

Mindfulness is the act of focusing attention on present-moment experiences. Apply that to a meal, and mindful eating means actually paying attention to the food you’re eating, making you less likely to thoughtlessly plow through a bag of potato chips, for instance. The only thing you have to focus on is the food. Mindfulness brings you back to the present moment, back to the present meal.

Mindfulness sharpens a person’s ability to recognize internal cues that signal hunger and fullness. That caloric balancing act may be a long-term habit of the mindful. People who were more mindful and paid more attention to body sensations didn’t weigh less than their less mindful peers, but they experienced fewer weight fluctuations over time.

Mindfulness also helps take the claws out of cravings. When you see a cake or chips, you think about what it would be like to take some of it, what it would feel like in your mouth. But mindfulness can disrupt that automatic reaction by reducing the appeal of unhealthy foods. The trick is to think of your food craving, when it pops up, as nothing more than a mere thought. “It’s really like a soap bubble,” she says. “As soon as you touch it, it’s going to disperse.”

Think Mindfully

It’s not easy to get people to think mindfully about their food, however. As we reduce the use of electronic gadgets while having food, it will start to get much easier.