Experimenting with Mindful Eating

If you've ever tried mindful eating, you know it's much harder than it sounds. It's easy to get sucked into checking your phone or turning on the TV if you're eating alone. If you're eating with others, it's easy to stop paying attention to the food you're eating.

Every meal and snack doesn't have to be 100% focused. Start with just one occasion per day.

Remember that anything else you try to do at the same time as eating will usually steal your focus. We're really good at eating - we've been doing it our entire lives - so we can do it on auto-pilot, and our attention naturally goes to any other activity that we're try to multi-task with.

Notice your hunger at the beginning of the meal and periodically as you eat.

Observe all 5 senses - eating is one of the few activities that uses all of our senses, and I think that might be part of why we enjoy it so much.

Put down your fork between bites. Savor. Smile. 🙂

How does eating mindful make you feel? Is it stressful? Does it make you feel unproductive, or bored? The way you feel when you eat mindfully tells you a lot about your relationship with food, and what work you might need to do to improve it.

One of my clients calls me her "food therapist." I love that. We all have a relationship with food - but is the relationship nourishing us, or is it harming us?

Eating more mindfully is the first step in uncovering what that relationship looks like - and what it COULD look like.
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Want to learn more? Comment below or send me a message. If you'd like more personalized guidance, schedule an appointment or a free 15-minute discovery call with me. I'd love to work with you.

Erica Golden, RDN, LD, IFNCP

Registered Dietitian Nutritionist
Nutritional Psychiatry/Mental Health. Eating Disorders. Gut Health. Weight-Inclusive. Trauma-Informed.