Mindful Eating: How to Savor Your Meals and Improve Your Health

In this crazy, modern world, we have a tendency to hyper-focus on what is easily measured, at the expense of everything else. We track calories and macronutrients and jump from one fad diet to another, but pay very little attention to how we eat.

How we eat might give us important clues to our overall well-being. The effects of eating mindfully are beginning to come to the surface in bits and pieces, but because the effect is more holistic, it’s hard to measure and pinpoint exactly what is correlation and what is causation.

But here’s the thing— eating mindfully comes with virtually no downside. Once you’ve learned how to do it, you’ll find that it’s a much more enjoyable eating experience than one you’ve ever had before. The evidence suggests it might indeed be great for your health as well. 

What Is Mindful Eating?

Are you interested in incorporating this simple, yet powerful practice in your daily life? It’s easy, as all it involves is paying more attention to the food that you have on your plate, and the process of putting it into your mouth. It’s a practice that involves tapping deeper into your senses and being present with the flavors, textures, sounds, and feelings of enjoying each bite. 

Mindful eating is about appreciating your food, no matter what you’re eating, and enjoying what you eat in a way that isn’t judgemental or too hard on yourself. As you learn to focus on savoring your food, instead of shoveling it down your throat in a rush to get on with life, you’ll come to appreciate this ordinary pleasure in a whole new way.

Why Is Mindful Eating Important?

You can probably see where I’m going with this. Mindful eating is a practice that slows you down, increases your awareness, and in the process provides a host of mental and physical health benefits. Let’s take a look at just a few of them:

Better digestion. Eating while stressed is a well-known source of gastro-intestinal (GI) discomfort. A study from 2020 on a group of people with IBS showed that they had much less GI issues when they adopted a mindfulness routine. Mindful eating might be one such way to gain similar benefits in your own life.

Less overeating. Mindfulness practices were also documented, in a 2014 systematic review, to be associated with lower levels of binge eating and emotional eating in populations already engaging in this behavior. Simply raising awareness of our actions, instead of acting impulsively, seems to nudge us in the direction of healthier eating patterns.

Increased relaxation. Not only is mindful eating better for our waistline, it can immediately improve the quality of your life by reducing overall levels of stress throughout your body. A 2011 randomized control study found lower cortisol levels as a result of simply being more mindful. Imagine that doing something so easy and enjoyable, can have such a direct, positive impact on your body’s hormones.

More pleasure. I’ve already hinted at this benefit in the others, but it’s worth saying loud and clear— mindful eating is simply more fun than the alternative. Is your life already so fun of pleasurable, healthy choices that you can afford to turn them down? Life rarely offers such a free lunch (pun intended), but this might be one of those rare exceptions.

How To Incorporate Mindful Eating Into Your Life

1. Set a peaceful mood for your meal. Consider setting a candle and turning on some gentle music. Adjust the lighting and bring out your good plates. Tap into the power of aesthetics.
2. Adopt a grateful mindset. I begin each meal with a prayer of thanksgiving, and recommend a similar practice to anyone who is open to the idea. It reminds us that all of life is a gift to be cherished.
3. Pay attention to each one of your senses. When we rush through a meal, we rarely give any notice to the look, texture, taste, smell, sound and feel of the various items on our plates. And not just the food, but the whole experience of eating, wherever it’s being done, and with whoever we’re sharing it with.
4. Slow down and take pauses. The key to mindful eating is simply slowing down and noticing. Chew your food more thoroughly and consider putting down your utensils after a few bites. 
5. Listen to the signals your body sends you. One of the reasons we tend to overeat nowadays is that we don’t give our body enough time to speak to us, and we certainly don’t listen. Are you feeling full? Are you still hungry? Listen to the clear, but quiet cues your body sends you.
6. Focus on what is good and savor. Mindful eating isn’t just a healthy living practice, it’s a better way of living. If you’re doing it right, it shouldn’t feel like work, but rather a leisurely respite from the demands and busyness of the rest of your day.
7. Reduce the noise and distraction. If you’re like me, a quiet meal by yourself feels like the perfect time to reach for your phone. There is a time and place for enjoying the internet, but doing so takes our minds away from the good gifts in front of us and treats them as second class pleasures, which they certainly are not.

Embrace the Journey

By practicing mindful eating on a regular basis, we can begin to take back control of our lives form this busyness and craziness of the modern world. Perhaps in doing so we’ll be better able to manage our weight and manage the unavoidable stressors of daily life. The best part— it doesn’t take any special knowledge of tools to get started. You can begin with your very next meal. All you have to do is slow down, pay attention to your senses, savor the reality of the moment, and give thanks for being alive.