Mindful eating means:*

• To eat with greater awareness.

• To discriminate physical cues of hunger from false hunger cues.

• To make healthier food choices.

• To stop eating when you no longer feel hungry.

• To be less judgmental about one’s eating struggles.

• To use all your senses (including your thoughts and emotions) to choose foods which are nourishing to your body.

• Adapted, in part, from www.thecenterformindfuleating.org

For many of us, eating has become a source of great difficulty which adversely

affects our physical health, emotional well-being, self-esteem, relationships,

anxiety level and makes us depressed as we repeatedly feel disappointed after

failed attempts at dieting or weight loss programs. Mindful eating techniques can

help us to settle down, become centered and learn new ways to resolve our food

and eating related difficulties without the need to feel deprived.

Mindful eating is about learning how to cultivate greater awareness of the

thoughts, feelings, and behaviors which reinforce our eating problems. At the

same time, mindful eating can make the eating experience more enjoyable and

health promoting.

Mindful eating practices are a way of looking at an aspect of the eating

experience which is usually overlooked completely: namely our relationship to

food. It is our relationship to food which contributes to the automatic reactivity

cycle which perpetuates excessive eating, late night eating, unhealthy eating

patterns, guilty feelings, regrets, disappointment and the sense that we can never

overcome our struggle with food. As we become more aware of our unique

relationship to food we can start to make more appropriate decisions.