Section Overview
This section discusses mindfulness and mindful eating. Mindful eating has been found to have a variety of health benefits and teaching children to eat mindfully can have long-term impacts on their eating. In addition to defining mindfulness and mindful eating this section helps you to determine if you eat mindfully and provides the elements of mindful eating!
Definition of Mindful Eating
What is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness is the act of being aware of what is happening in the present moment. When you are mindful, you are thinking and acknowledging your feelings, thoughts, and body sensations.
What is Mindful Eating?
Mindful eating is when you are aware of your bodily sensations including hunger and fullness, the sight, smell, and taste of foods. While engaging in mindful eating you reach full attention to what you are doing when you are eating. For example, you might take the time to consider the color of the foods you are eating, the textures, and the flavor sensations including if the food tastes salty or sweet on your tongue. When you are eating mindfully you are more aware of what you are eating and how it makes you feel. Everyone has the capability to learn to eat more mindfully. With practice, mindfulness can help you and your family build a happy and healthy relationship with food.
Benefits of Mindful Eating
Mindful eating can help you and your family enjoy the eating experience more. It also can help you to maintain and enjoy different cultures and family traditions around food. People that eat mindfully learn to recognize hunger and satiety cues better and are more able to respond to food cravings in healthy ways.
Some other health benefits may include:
- Increased immune function
- Decreased anxiety
- Decreased chronic pain
- Weight loss or weight maintenance
Elements of Mindful Eating
- Eat slowly
- Minimize distractions when you eat
- Use your eyes, ears, mouth, and sense of touch to engage your senses while you eat
- Chew slowly
- Finish each bite completely before filling your fork again
- Sense your hunger and fullness cues and use those cues to decide when to start and stop eating
- Appreciate your food
How to Practice Mindful Eating with your Family
Although you might not be able to practice mindful feeding practices at every mealtime, try incorporating it a few times a week at family meals to promote mindful eating among your family members! Here are some steps you can take to help your family implement mindful eating.
- Remind kids to first look at the food on their plate and have them describe to you what they see. What types of colors do they see on their plate? Does anything stand out to them?
- Let the kids touch the food. How does it feel in their hands?
- Have children smell the food. What types of scents are they able to pick up?