At Jomeis Fine Foods, we are focused on both physical wellbeing and mental wellbeing. So, when we find a strategy that can help you achieve growth in both of these aspects of your life, we can't help but share it with our health-loving community. While mindful eating isn't a new practice by any means, it's grown more popular for helping people re-discover their love of food, especially after diet culture has had such a negative impact on society.
But, what is mindful eating, and how can it change your life? Find out more by reading below.
What is Mindful Eating?
Mindful eating is exactly as it sounds; it focuses on eating mindfully. It's about slowing down, taking smaller bites and truly savouring every mouthful of your meals. It's a great way to train yourself to eat slower, helping you to recognise sooner if you have had your fill. But, beyond this, it's a great way to help you develop a better appreciation for the food on your plate by taking a moment to truly embrace all of the ingredients, flavours and cooking skills that went into creating it.
Mindful eating doesn't need to revolve around salads and quinoa, either. You can embrace mindful eating even when you're enjoying a cheat meal, such as takeout, as it still allows you to appreciate the flavours on your plate and form a strong connection with your body. This way, you'll understand when you're full and when your body has had enough.
How can you eat mindfully?
There are plenty of steps you can take to embrace mindful eating and, therefore, make mindfulness and good eating practices a part of your everyday. Some of them include:
Honouring Your Food
Before you eat, take a moment to think about where your food came from, who created it and the effort that went into it. Appreciating these things can help add a dose of positive thinking into your life, which is critical for improving your emotional health and wellbeing.
Use all of your senses
If you are working at your desk or in a rush at dinner, you may not take the time to enjoy your meal. Rather than just chewing and swallowing, use all of your senses to appreciate your meal. Use your eyes to look at your food, admire its colours and identify all the ingredients. Use your ears to listen to how your food crunches, stirs or bubbles. Use your nose to smell every bite. This will help you taste the food more when it enters your mouth. When the meal allows, use your hands to feel it too.
This sensory experience can also help you embrace your sense of play and exploration, priming your mind to flourish during mealtime. As mentioned, it's also a great way to ensure you slow down, allowing your body to understand when it's full, to prevent over-eating and develop a healthier relationship with mealtime.
Don't skip meals
Okay! If you're not hungry, it is totally okay to not have a big dinner or a large lunch, but skipping meals for weight loss or retention is a no-go in the mindful eating realm. This is because skipping meals increases your chances of strong hunger or ravenous feelings. When it comes to dinner time, even if you try to slow down, you may feel that you gobble your food too quickly. Not only this but if you're super hungry, you may choose to get takeout instead of cooking that meal you had planned, making it all the easier to sink into unhealthy eating habits.
Listening to your body
A lot of people have a negative relationship with food because they don't understand the correlation between food and the body. Mindful eating doesn't just call you to taste your food and savour every bite for longer, it also calls you to listen to your body's cues about your food. This also includes if you don't enjoy the taste of your food, because you shouldn't be forcing yourself to eat if you're not finding satisfaction from your food. Another key cue you should listen for during mindful eating is when your body feels full. While you may be fooled into thinking it's 'polite' to finish everything on your plate, it's important to remember to be polite to yourself, which also means not over-eating.
Eat Mindfully With Jomeis Fine Foods
The Jomeis Fine Foods range calls us to slow down, enjoy the finer things in life and appreciate the goodness in our food. It's a reminder that food isn't just a basis for weight gain, but is also an important way to fuel your body and give you the energy to live life to the fullest. Explore our range to begin your mindful eating experience today.
