The Difference between Mindful and Mindless Eating

To better understand how you can incorporate mindful eating into your life, take the time to consider the difference between mindful and mindless eating. When you know the difference, you can practice mindfulness during eating more consciously.

Mindful Eating Means:

* Recognizing Nurturing Opportunities Surrounding Food – Humans like to interact, with food being the center of attention. This is a normal thing; after all, eating is a very pleasurable experience. It does more than just provide nutrition and life – which is everything; it provides pleasure and joy too.

* Understanding the Difference between the Different Kinds of Hunger – When you are eating mindfully, you don’t place meaning on hunger that doesn’t exist. You also don’t think being hungry is a bad thing. You can analyze your feelings and choose how to deal with them.

* Not Judging Food Likes and Dislikes Harshly – When you eat mindfully, not only do you not place judgment on what you choose to eat, you don’t do it to others (like your kids) either. There are plenty of choices one can make with food, so there is no reason to eat things you dislike.

* Knowing What Being Satiated Means and What It Feels Like – As a mindful eater, you can look at your feelings surrounding hunger and satisfaction. You can look non-judgmentally at your situation and decide if you’ve had enough because you know you can have more.

* Practicing Being in the Moment – As a mindful eater, one of the ways you accomplish it is by living in the moment. Instead of thinking about what you’re going to do or eat tonight, you’re enjoying what you’re doing or eating now.

Mindless Eating Means:

* Seeing Food as an Obstacle to Overcome – Many people using traditional dieting programs focus more on scarcity so that food becomes something you have to overcome instead of enjoying. Instead of going to your mom’s for Sunday dinner, you may worry about seeing that apple pie that Granny made.

* Not Even Remembering What You Ate Last – When you are not paying attention to what you eat, the quality tends to be so low that you cannot even remember what you last ate. When you are eating mindfully, you can remember it because it was delicious.

* Having No Idea If You’re Being Nourished by Your Food or Not – It doesn’t even matter what diet program you try; they are focused on finding ways to get low-calorie food into you without any concern of nutrition (much less flavor).

* Eating by the Clock instead of Your Hunger Signals – When you are eating mindlessly often, you eat just because it’s time. The clock says it’s time, so you mindlessly go through the motions without much interest or joy.

Hopefully, these ideas help you understand the difference between mindful and mindless eating. When you are eating mindfully, you can let go and enjoy whatever you choose to eat. You can eat when you are hungry and stop when you are satisfied. You can choose from a wide variety of food and never eat something you dislike.