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Beauty & Health

Mindful Eating: Here’s Why You Should Try It If You’re Sick Of Dieting

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Diet & Nutrition

Mindful Eating: Here’s Why You Should Try It If You’re Sick Of Dieting

For starters, mindful eating will improve your relationship with food

October 27, 2020
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Credit: Envato Elements

Should you really stop dieting and start mindful eating? Well, if your diet plan hasn’t been helping with your weight loss goals, or if you’re finding it very difficult to stick to, then yes – give mindful eating a go. It might actually be better on your body and mental health.

But wait, what is mindful eating?

Mindful eating relates to mindfulness, a concept that stems from Buddhism. Originally, it involves meditation so you become aware of your current state and being. This helps you better cope with your internal (emotions, thoughts) and external (physical) sensations.

Case in point: the way American writer Ernest Hemingway enjoys his oysters. To the unknowing, he’s just being very descriptive with his food; but if you’ve heard of mindful eating, that’s exactly what he’s doing.

As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.
― Ernest Hemingway

I have to admit that when I first heard of this term, it sounded very fluffy. It’s a different approach to when I count calories with clients, or teach them about the nutrients in food.

After doing some further reading about mindful eating, I came to realise that it should always go hand in hand with dietary change. Here are five reasons why.

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https://www.womensweekly.com.sg/gallery/beauty-and-health/diet-and-nutrition/mindful-eating-diet-weight-loss/
Mindful Eating: Here's Why You Should Try It If You're Sick Of Dieting
You regain control. You are no longer enslaved by any diet
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When you eat mindfully, you give full attention to what you experience. Slowly, you gain awareness in four aspects:

Body: All physical aspects. Are you holding your breath? Lifting a spoon to your mouth? Shivering? Feeling bloated? Is your stomach growling? Is your mouth tasting something? Are you salivating? Is your body lethargic?

Thought: What you are thinking. It may be: “that looks delicious”, “I’m so hungry”, “I can’t eat that because it’s fat”, “That’s so sinful”, “I will never lose weight because I have no discipline”. Notice whether your thoughts are factual, positive, negative, critical, or judgmental.

Feeling: Anything that deals with emotions. Boredom, excitement, stress, unhappiness, guilt, disgust.

Mind: (personally, I find this the hardest to comprehend because your thoughts and feelings all go through your mind) The easiest way is to think of it as: the state of your mind. Is your mind focused, tired, observant, wary, preoccupied, troubled, calm, craving, restless, content?

These four aspects always link up to each other. They connect the intangible (our mind’s processes, our physical sensations, our thoughts) with the tangible (our physical senses). Normally, you wouldn’t notice it, but when you break it down this way, you realise the many things that form our actions and behaviours.

It may not be possible to analyse every single thought or action like that example. However, you can start thinking about these four aspects at times where you remember losing control before. If you can determine the why behind the what that you do, then you slowly start regaining control of your action and your body.

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Mindful eating does not criticise or judge, it accepts
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Because it focuses so much on you and your awareness, it helps you filter out all the unnecessary and meaningless “noise” around you. It may be your family’s negative comments or your friend’s successful weight loss transformation on Instagram. If you do mindfulness right, all these things don’t matter. All that matters is you.

Gradually, you become confident because you know your body best, you know what’s going through your mind, and the thoughts that guide you or sabotage you. You stop criticising the way you look or feeling guilty about having dessert.

You accept foods for what they are and live with your choices.

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Mindful eating lets you enjoy every single bite of food
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If I asked you to describe the last meal you had in detail, would you be able to? Now, did you enjoy every single bite of it? Did you enjoy the last bite, or the middle few bites, as much as the first one? Most of the time, it would be a no.

I myself have been through such meals. When I have nachos, after that first explosion of flavour in my mouth (creamy, sharp, salty cheese on crunchy corn nachos), the bites that come after are just a fleeting taste before it is all wolfed down.

If you pick up mindful eating, you would learn how to savour food with all your senses. Going through the process of mindful eating allows you to realise when you stop enjoying a food, and to stop once you’re done, especially with treats.

It allows you to enjoy food for what it is, in appropriate portions, with no guilt – just pure happiness.

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Mindful eating is not restrictive like other diets
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Mindful eating is not a specific type of diet (e.g. intermittent fasting/keto/atkins/low-carb/high-protein/blood-type, etc.), and so it does not restrict what you eat. If you’ve worked through the last step right, you will realise that mindful eating is naturally self-restricting.

In time, you learn to be aware of your thoughts and behaviours, and how that affects your feelings and your bodily sensations. Eventually, you learn to stop eating when you feel just right.

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Being mindful teaches you how to be a better human
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A better human to yourself, and the people around you. Mindfulness can be applied to so many aspects of our lives. You start reflecting on: the way you yell at your children who are throwing a tantrum while the TV blasts in the background and dishes lie piled up in the sink, the way you half-heartedly nod and “uh-huh” in response to your spouse telling you about his or her day, the way you purse your lips and passive-aggressively strut out a meeting you were unhappy about.

Being mindful of what you’re thinking, how that affects your emotions, how it translates into a physical response, and how that physical response, in turn, affects you, is a form of reflection. This reflection can help change your behaviour and, perhaps, make you a better person.

Text: Yan Yin Phoi/Shape

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  • healthy living
  • mindful eating
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