Mindful Eating is the best way to Optimal Weight

Introduction

As a Registered Dietitian, I was taught to provide evidence-based, scientifically proven nutrition advice to patients during my clinical nutrition training since college. But there aren’t many scientific studies showing the effectiveness of Mindful Eating (recently there are some researches finding positive health results from mindfulness-based practices). So why do I believe in Mindful Eating so much?

1. Mindfully regulate emotional eating.

So much of our food decisions are influenced by our emotions¹. If I look back, when I used to eat emotionally probably 100% of my food decisions are controlled by my emotions. Rarely I would ask my body if I was hungry or not. Out of frustrations and anger, I would automatically reach for the Hershey bars. I see so many people struggle to differentiate where their hunger is coming from and mistakenly think that it’s because of their lack of discipline or willpower. Thus, forcefully restricting their intake by going on a conventional diet.

Mindful eating and mindfulness teach you to observe things from a balanced perspective, so you don’t make decisions based on ever-changing emotions. By practicing mindful eating, you understand where your hunger is coming from whether from physical or emotional hunger.

2. Mindful Eating is forgiving.

Unlike following a strict diet, mindful eating won’t restrict you from calories or your favorite foods. It won’t punish you from eating over the calories or junk foods, which removes excess stress caused by following conventional diets.

What mindful eating teaches you is to respect your body and put your health before anything else. If you’re not feeling good about yourself and healthy, there will be other problems both internally and externally. You may start to develop illnesses and not be as productive at work.

Just like being negative will not make you positive or happy, being negative about your body will not give you the desired results. I often see people following conventional diets punishing themselves for getting off track of their meal plan, those behavior will not bring you to a better place.

Mindfulness will also teach you to let go and not to judge yourself for your mistakes.

Shift your perspective and see your mistake as a learning opportunity. If you’re following a meal plan and it’s not working for you, rather than punishing yourself, reevaluate your meal plan.

• What is not working?
• How can you change your lifestyle or meal plan to fit your lifestyle?
• Is the meal plan you’re following beneficial for you?

Being brave to fire your meal plan or weight loss program if it is not serving you. You don’t have to make yourself miserable by following a crazy diet just because your mom recommended it.

Be patient to find what’s right for you.

3. Honoring your body’s wisdom.

The commercial diets out there, from calorie counting to Paleo diets; disregard what our body is telling us. Mindful Eating is the opposite, it forces you to listen and respect your body. If you listen to your body carefully and putting less stress on your body, you won’t be craving junk, but rather you will start to crave healing foods such as vegetables and fruits.

How do you listen to your body? Your body is constantly signaling you in various ways such as giving you a hangover if you drank too much alcohol, heartburn when you eat too many fried foods, muscle soreness when you rarely exercise. These are all signals that your body is telling you what’s going on.

In this busy day and age, many people have learned to ignore, push through, and suppress these signals by taking painkillers without slowing down. I know it’s hard to slow down when you’re so busy at work, providing for your family.

Mindful eating doesn’t have to be so time consuming.

In fact, it takes less time than following a conventional diet because it does not have a strict rule to follow or make you follow an impossible-to-follow meal plan. It makes takes some time, in the beginning, to get used to and be able to listen to your body, but in the long run, I believe mindful eating will give you health and confidence in your body.

Summary

Mindful eating will teach you the basics of healthy eating and a healthy lifestyle rather than focusing on your physical appearance. It teaches you to better manage your emotional eating habits. Many quick-fix diets will not address the facts that humans eat based on our emotions and it punishes you saying you’re lacking in willpower if you fail to follow their strict meal plan.

At the same time, mindful eating will never punish you for not able to follow the plan. It understands that as human beings, we are living in a constant state of change. Mindful eating teaches us how to be flexible when life throws a curveball. Mindful eating is not a diet but it’s a teaching that you can use your life to maintain your health and wellbeing.

Another important aspect of mindful eating is listening to your body. Conventional diet rarely addresses this important point, rather it teaches you to ignore what your body is telling you.  And so many people miss the signal the body is telling which can be a cue to improving health. I can say listening to your body is one of the pillars of mindful eating. Without understanding your body, it’s difficult to know what’s best for you nor what’s working. The number on the scale shouldn’t be the only benchmark of weight loss rather I want people to focus more on how they feel in their body.

Last thoughts…

Recently, there’s been a lot of media coverage about mindfulness and mindful eating. Despite mindfulness is gaining more attention, the billion-dollar weight loss industry is stronger than ever to get you on the next five-day weight-loss diet².

Mindful Eating may be a slow way to lose weight, it can take weeks, months, or even years to see any physical change. But if you’re looking for a quick way to change your physical appearance via mindful eating, you’re missing the point.

Mindfulness can sometimes sound so abstract and philosophical, which is true because it contains both aspects. But fear not, you can start incorporating mindfulness from today. You can learn simple steps to master Mindful Eating by subscribing to my 7 Day Mindful Eating Challenge below.