If you have developed the habit of emotional or binge eating, in other words, you immediately crave a specific type of food or volume of food when you are stressed, sad, anxious, upset, bored, or even happy, mindful eating can help you tremendously. Especially if you find yourself mindlessly eating a large amount of food without even tasting what you are eating.
It is important that you try a variety of things until you figure out what helps your own issues with emotional eating, but mindful eating is a great tool.
Mindfulness itself can be seen as a form of gentle meditation, where you are focusing on your current feelings or emotions, instead of clearing your mind entirely like with regular meditation. Mindful eating uses this same approach to get you to focus on what you are eating and just be in the moment.
Sometimes when you eat, you’re tired, bored, stressed, or just don‘t want to think; you want to zone out. During these types of eating rituals, time may seem to pass quickly without you noticing. What’s even more distressing is when you look down and realize you completely demolished a huge bag of chips.
One great way to deal with this habit is to make it a point to practice slow, mindful eating.
During mindful eating, instead of just sitting down with food and concentrating on something else, you are focusing on your food. The texture and taste, the temperature, how your body feels, and what is going through your mind at the time of eating.
Eating mindlessly while doing something else is like having a conversation with someone while daydreaming.
You’ll keep asking back: “What did you say?”, “Sorry, how’s that again?” Even though you are physically present you don’t experience the words.
The same happens with your body when you eat mindlessly. It’ll keep asking: “What was that you were eating?”, “Sorry, how did that taste again?” Your body won’t fully experience the food you’re eating so it won’t feel satisfied even when your stomach is full. Your body will ask for more food as you didn’t get enough pleasure from what you ate.
The reason mindful eating helps so much with emotional eating is that it helps you experience the food itself, not just use it to cover up your emotions.
With emotional eating, people tend to hurry up and eat as fast as possible, without really thinking about the food. You get into this state where you are in a hurry to just feel something else to cover up what you are trying to hide, which leads to a sense of unfulfillment both physically and emotionally.
With mindful eating, you are aware of your body the entire time, and understand when you are full or just no longer enjoying what you are eating.
A big sign that you are eating emotionally or mindlessly is that you keep eating even after the food no longer interests you and doesn’t taste good anymore.
This might sound unbelievable, since a binge is driven by an overwhelming urge to eat as much food as possible, as fast as possible. This differentiates binge eating from simply overeating.
So how does this work? Use the “slow binging” technique.
This is what you need to do: when you start binging, try to slow down as soon as you realize what’s happening. I know it´s hard but even a few seconds count.
Pause. Breathe. Even just one breath between bites will help.
You probably won´t be able to stop eating, and that’s okay. How much you eat isn’t as important as getting back into a more mindful state instead of the unconscious, mindless eating state. You know, when it feels like a monster took over your body.
By practising this technique every time you have a binge eating episode, over time you’ll get more effective at regaining control over your eating habit.
Don’t be hard on yourself: if you forget to or can’t slow down during one meal, just slow down next time, and notice what happens.
As you can see mindful eating helps with emotional eating but it has many other benefits too.
You will eat less without feeling deprived even if you don´t change what you eat.
In one study, the University of Rhode Island researchers served the same pasta lunch to 30 normal-weight women on two different days. At both meals, participants were told to eat until comfortably full.
But they had to eat differently on those two days.
Day 1: Eat as fast as you can.
Day 2: Eat slowly and put your utensils down between every bite.
The results:
On day 1 the women consumed 646 calories in 9 minutes.
On day 2 they consumed 579 calories in 29 minutes.
So, interestingly, on day 2 they ate 67 fewer calories in 20 more minutes.
Besides, they also became hungry later afterwards compared to when they ate their lunch quickly.
If you eat slowly at every meal and snack, you can save hundreds of calories in a day without changing what you eat.
You’ll be less bloated, your digestion will improve, and you’ll absorb more nutrients from properly chewed food.
You can use slow, mindful eating in restaurants, at social events, while you travel, or at home after a long day at work, anywhere really. You can practice it in any situation.
While eating slowly and mindfully is simple and effective—it´s not necessarily easy.
Mindful eating can seem a little overwhelming at first, but it really only takes one meal or snack a day to practice.
To start mindful eating, choose one meal a day that you focus on. Eat sitting down somewhere comfortable, set the table nicely, and eat without other distractions. This means not using your phone, not working while eating, and not watching anything on the TV.
Just sit and enjoy your meal, paying attention to each bite, from the flavor, texture, and temperature of the food to how it makes you feel. You can also focus on your thoughts at this time.
Aim for a little bit better every time. Don´t expect to do it perfectly the first time. If you have small children mindful eating may be more challenging. If that’s the case, focus on working toward them and bringing as much presence to your eating as you can.
I share many tips and strategies on how to start practising slow, mindful eating in the How to stop eating workbook (written tips) and also in the Healthy Habits for Permanent Weight Loss course (video format and a cheat sheet).
If you have questions you can also contact me at hello@ritamayblog.com or book a free consultation HERE.
In summary, my answer to the question of whether mindful eating helps with emotional eating is a definitive yes.
I hope you found this post useful. If you liked it please share it with others 🙂
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