Mindful eating can help you understand the types of emotions that surround your relationship with food. Being able to visualize how we might feel after a meal, before its happened, can help us connect better with the food we eat, and avoid any negative feelings.
Before you start eating, ask yourself these question:
- Will eating this food evoke any emotions? If so, which ones?
- Why do you think these emotions are surfacing?
- Are you eating to satisfy hunger or cope with a specific emotion or issue in your day?
- Will this meal feel nourishing? If not, why?
The goal of this activity is to become more aware of your emotional responses to food and develop a better understanding of how feelings can effect how we eat,not just what we eat.
SOURCES AND FURTHER READING:
- Mindful Eating: The Art of Presence While You
Eat: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5556586/ - Mindful Eating: A Review Of How The Stress-Digestion-Mindfulness Triad May Modulate and Improve Gastrointestinal And Digestive Function:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7219460/ - An Exploratory Study of a Meditation-based Intervention for Binge Eating Disorder:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/135910539900400305 - Today’s Dietitian – Mindful Eating — Studies Show This Concept Can Help Clients Lose Weight and Better Manage Chronic Disease
https://www.todaysdietitian.com/newarchives/030413p42.shtml - Eating when bored: revision of the emotional eating scale with a focus on boredom:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22004466/ - Eating attentively: a systematic review and meta-analysis of the effect of food intake memory and awareness on eating:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3607652/
