We meditate to train the mind — to find the space to make better choices in the interests of our overall health, not our body shape or weight. There is no one perfect way to eat in the same way that there is no one perfect body. We each have our own genetics, metabolisms, preferences, and priorities.

Some of us gorge; some of us graze. Some snack; some comfort eat. Some undereat; others overeat. Some are gym bunnies obsessing about stacking on the pounds while others are diet junkies, obsessing about losing the pounds.

Knowing who we are — and being honest with ourselves — helps us understand why we eat the way we do. The more we recognize those early influences, the better positioned we are to decide what and when we choose to eat.

For people who undereat, the effect of this awareness may be that they may eat more; for people who tend to overeat, they may consume less. Others may find their eating patterns remain the same while their thinking around food changes.

In this respect, mindful eating is an equalizer, allowing us to find a balance in how we relate to food. We each have our own attitudes and patterns of behavior around food, whether this is due to genetics, circumstances, or family conditioning. Awareness of those origins provides the foundation for mindful eating, but the only way to understand our relationship with food is to spend time with that relationship.

Mindfulness inserts a pause to help us be aware of our own decision-making. Only when we stop to notice this chain of events can we start to change our behavior or thinking about food.

This is a skill mindfulness affords, meaning we can consider our food selections in advance. In bringing more planning to our grocery list, restaurant menu, or kitchen, we are less inclined to feel any guilt or shame about our balanced choices.

In observing the mind in this way, we can free ourselves from emotions that fuel our habits. Imagine what it would be like to no longer be led by our inner dialogue around food. Imagine instead having a more balanced, carefree attitude, freed from the shackles of poor eating habits. As we step away from all the unhealthy thinking around food, we cultivate a sustainable and balanced approach to the way we eat and the way we look.

Essentially, we get to re-educate ourselves. We get to enjoy our food again. How often do you think about food on any given day?

You might travel by a fruit stand on your commute, for example. Or maybe all you can think about while heading home is that ripe avocado waiting for you on the counter.

Food is simply the object of our fascination and cravings. It has no power over us in and of itself. The power rests in our emotions, our conditioning, and our decisions.

Without understanding the thoughts and emotions involved in our relationship with food, there can be no room for change. One of the biggest realizations that comes with mindful eating is how much we are influenced by what we think and feel. Food is fuel. We need it to live.

Once we get a handle on our thoughts and emotions around food, we weaken its hold over us and learn not to judge ourselves so harshly.

The benefits of mindful eating will, of course, be subjective. Someone weighing lbs. could be eating healthier than someone at lbs. Thinness does not equal healthy in the same way fatness cannot be conflated to mean unhealthy.

It's with this kind of perspective—this kind of awareness—that we come to discover renewed confidence, freedom, and self-acceptance.

Ultimately, the more we are in the body and less in the thinking mind, the more we are able to contribute to a more enjoyable experience and a healthier connection to our food and our bodies.

The scientific research exploring mindful eating is primarily focused on weight loss and recovery from disordered eating, and it generally shows a positive benefit.

A growing body of research suggests that a more considered way of eating steers people away from unhealthy choices. A recent review of the literature concluded that mindful eating promotes not only positive eating behaviors but also leads to moderate and sustained weight loss for those trying to lose weight.

Studies suggest that a more considered way of eating steers people away from unhealthy choices. One particular review , which looked at 18 different studies, investigated the efficacy of mindful eating among overweight people who were trying to lose weight, and found that this approach was effective in changing eating behaviors as well as moderate weight loss.

The difficulty with diets, as demonstrated by other research , is that most people lose weight in the first year, but the vast majority regain that weight within the following five years.

Indeed, for some people, especially those who have been on restrictive diets, it might even mean adding on a little healthy weight. Mindful eating is no modern-day concept. The day Headspace Mindful Eating course is one way to better understand why we eat the way we do and the thoughts that drive our choices.

By seeing things more clearly and accepting what previously challenged us, we make room to foster a healthier relationship with food. This approach, like anything else, is no quick fix, but the benefits of incorporating mindfulness are potentially life-changing because it allows us to let go of the restrictions around food and instead focus on awareness, self-compassion, and freedom of choice.

By encouraging a greater sense of confidence and trust in our decision-making with food, we have the opportunity to move from external motivation to self-motivation, forever changing how we relate to food which, in turn, leads to a healthier and happier life. See what it means to truly experience a meal.

Start the pack. Download now. Want some help remembering to eat mindfully? So go ahead — stock your cupboard with food you love. Then sit down and be present as you savor every moment of eating it.

Mix things up to experience your food in a whole new way. If you usually eat with chopsticks, try a fork. If you usually eat with a fork, try chopsticks. Are you right handed? Try using your left hand, and vice versa.

Mindful eating is a great way to embrace curiosity, broadening your palate and learning something new about your likes and dislikes. Jump into your new practice with the essentials. Then explore hundreds of exercises for sleep, stress, focus, and more. Jenkins, K. Resisting chocolate temptation using a brief mindfulness strategy.

British Journal Of Health Psychology, 19 3 , — Jordan, C. Mindful eating: Trait and state mindfulness predict healthier eating behavior. Personality and Individual Differences, 68 , — Kabat-Zinn, J. Full catastrophe living: Using the wisdom of your body and mind to face stress, pain and illness.

Eating meditation. On mindfulness for beginners [CD]. Sounds True Inc. Karlsson, J. Psychometric properties and factor structure of the Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire TFEQ in obese men and women. Results from the Swedish obese subjects SOS study. International Journal Of Obesity, 24 12 , — Liberman, N.

The role of feasibility and desirability considerations in near and distant future decisions: A test of temporal construal theory. Journal of Personality And Social Psychology, 75 1 , 5— Mantzios, M. Group vs. single mindfulness meditation: Exploring avoidance, impulsivity, and weight management in two separate mindfulness meditation settings.

Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, 6 2 , — Google Scholar. How concrete construals can become mindful: A novel approach of developing mindfulness and self-compassion to assist weight loss. Psychology and Health, 29 4 , 1— Exploring mindfulness and mindfulness with self-compassion-centered interventions to assist weight loss: Theoretical considerations and preliminary results of a randomized pilot study.

Mindfulness, 6 4 , — A real-world application of short mindfulness-based practices: A review and reflection of the literature and a practical proposition for an effortless mindful lifestyle. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine , — Mindfulness, self-compassion, and mindful eating in relation to fat and sugar consumption: An exploratory investigation.

Eating And Weight Disorders - Studies On Anorexia, Bulimia And Obesity, 23 6 , — Marchiori, D. A brief mindfulness intervention reduces unhealthy eating when hungry, but not the portion size effect.

Appetite, 75 , 40— Mollen, S. Healthy and unhealthy social norms and food selection. Findings from a field-experiment.

Appetite, 65 , 83— Neff, K. Self-Compassion: An alternative conceptualization of a healthy attitude toward oneself. Self And Identity, 2 2 , 85— The role of self-compassion in development: A healthier way to relate to oneself. Human Development, 52 4 , — A pilot study and randomized controlled trial of the mindful self-compassion program.

Journal of Clinical Psychology, 69 1 , 28— Papies, E. Healthy Cognition: Processes of self-regulatory success in restrained eating. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34 9 , — Mindful attention prevents mindless impulses.

Social Psychological and Personality Science, 3 3 , — Using health primes to reduce unhealthy snack purchases among overweight consumers in a grocery store. International Journal of Obesity, 38 4 , — The benefits of simply observing: Mindful attention modulates the link between motivation and behavior.

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1 , — Robinson, E. Prompting healthier eating: Testing the use of health and social norm based messages. Health Psychology, 33 9 , — Romero, M. Healthy-left, unhealthy-right: Can displaying healthy items to the left versus right of unhealthy items nudge healthier choices?

Journal of Consumer Research, 43 1 , — Schmeichel, B. Self-control at high and low levels of mental construal. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2 2 , — Siep, N.

Hunger is the best spice: An fMRI study of the effects of attention, hunger and calorie content on food reward processing in the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex.

Behavioural Brain Research, 1 , — Small, M. Changes in eating and physical activity behaviors across seven semesters of college. Sprake, E. Eating habits associated with body weight gain in female university students. British Food Journal, 12 , — Steenhuis, I.

Portion size: Latest developments and interventions. Current Obesity Reports, 6 1 , 10— Stunkard, A. The three-factor eating questionnaire to measure dietary restraint, disinhibition and hunger.

Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 29 1 , 71— Tanay, G. State mindfulness scale SMS : Development and initial validation. Psychological Assessment, 25 4 , — Tanton, J. Eating behaviours of British university students: A cluster analysis on a neglected issue. Advances in Preventive Medicine, , 1—8.

Timmerman, G. The effect of a mindful restaurant eating intervention on weight management in women. Journal of Nutrition Education And Behavior, 44 1 , 22— Vadeboncoeur, C. A meta-analysis of weight gain in first year university students: Is freshman 15 a myth?

BMC Obesity, 2 1 , Versluis, I. Eating less from bigger packs: Preventing the pack size effect with diet primes. Appetite, , 70— Wansink, B.

Mindless eating. Environment and Behavior, 39 1 , — Mindless eating and healthy heuristics for the irrational. American Economic Review, 99 2 , — Download references. Department of Psychology, Faculty of Business, Law and Social Sciences, Birmingham City University, The Curzon Building, 4 Cardigan St.

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar. MH designed the study, collected data, conducted data analyses, and wrote the manuscript.

HE, RK, and MM supported the study and reviewed the manuscript. All authors gave their final approval of the manuscript. Correspondence to Misba Hussain. All procedures have been approved by the institutional research committee at Birmingham City University and have been performed in accordance with the ethical standards laid down in the Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments.

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Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

Reprints and permissions. Hussain, M. et al. Mindful Construal Reflections: Reducing Unhealthier Eating Choices. Mindfulness 12 , — Download citation. Accepted : 21 April Published : 05 May Issue Date : July Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:.

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article. Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative. Download PDF. Abstract Objectives Regularly choosing unhealthy energy-dense foods can have negative health consequences. Conclusions Together, these results suggest that the MCR may be effective in reducing consumption of unhealthy energy-dense foods.

Exploring the Effects of Mindfulness and Self-Distancing on Chocolate Intake After a Negative State Affect Article Open access 02 July Mindfulness Reduces Reactivity to Food Cues: Underlying Mechanisms and Applications in Daily Life Article Open access 28 April Mindful Awareness or Self-Regulation in Eating: an Investigation into the Underlying Dimensions of Mindful Eating Article Open access 27 May Use our pre-submission checklist Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Method Participants Eighty-five students attending a university in the West Midlands, UK, were enrolled through an online research participation website. Eligibility Participants were informed via an information sheet and consent form that they were not eligible to participate if they had any nut allergies or if they had been diagnosed with an eating disorder.

Procedures Enrolment The study was advertised as an experiment regarding affective responses to food tasting, and was deliberately kept vague in order to prevent people from predicting the true aim of the study.

Intervention—Use of Mindful Construal Reflection The MCR and MCD have previously shown to improve mindfulness longitudinally and within experimental settings Hussein et al. Table 1 Questions presented to participants in the mindfulness condition Full size table. Results The funneled debriefing procedure indicated that participants were not aware of the aims of the study.

Table 2 Means, Standard Deviations, and Significance Values of Variables Full size table. Table 3 Food selected by percentage of participants Full size table. Full size image. Discussion The present study examined whether the Mindful Construal Reflection could be an effective tool in promoting healthier food choices.

Limitations and Future Research There are some potential limitations to the present study that require further attention. References Al-Chalabi, L. BMC Public Health, 8 1 , Article PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar Albert, H.

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It takes time for your body to change how it is feeling when you start to eat something. The end goal is to be aware of how your thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations change while you are eating.

Self-reflection gives you the chance to look back on what you have done and decide if anything needs to change. If you want to make a change in your life or commit to personal growth then self-reflection is a necessary part of the process.

Without self-reflection, we would repeat the same behaviors over and over again. Very often we jump right into the next activity without thinking about what we just ate.

We don't think about whether that food makes us feel good or whether eating actually satisfied our hunger. One of the first thing people realize when they start to self reflect is just how much food that they eat that they actually don't enjoy eating.

Some foods can make you feel bad right after eating but because you never take the time to notice it you will continue to eat that food. That is why self-reflection is important. It helps us to make changes in our lives that lead to happier and healthier lives.

After you are done eating one of the first things you should be aware of is how hungry you are after eating. Checking in to see what your hunger is lets you know whether or not you have eaten too much or too little.

Usually, people think the goal of eating is to eat until you are full. Being full can make you feel sluggish or tired. What you should be aiming to do is eat until you are satisfied. Being satisfied means that you can go for a long time without feeling the need to eat. With self-reflection, you can fine-tune your feelings to find the point where being satisfied is.

After finding what your hunger is you should check how you feel after eating. Sometimes when we eat we feel great and sometimes we can feel negative emotions. Self-reflection helps you to confront those feelings that you have so you can make sure that you feel great after every meal that you have.

When you put it all together mindful eating can be broken down into three simple steps. Awareness is something we can also bring to the supermarket and the kitchen. It helps us learn not to make choices that are automatically influenced by external thoughts, emotions, or impulses but instead by our own internal knowledge of what our bodies need.

The mind is powerful, and when left untrained, it can be a susceptible to both emotion and habit. We meditate to train the mind — to find the space to make better choices in the interests of our overall health, not our body shape or weight.

There is no one perfect way to eat in the same way that there is no one perfect body. We each have our own genetics, metabolisms, preferences, and priorities. Some of us gorge; some of us graze. Some snack; some comfort eat. Some undereat; others overeat. Some are gym bunnies obsessing about stacking on the pounds while others are diet junkies, obsessing about losing the pounds.

Knowing who we are — and being honest with ourselves — helps us understand why we eat the way we do. The more we recognize those early influences, the better positioned we are to decide what and when we choose to eat. For people who undereat, the effect of this awareness may be that they may eat more; for people who tend to overeat, they may consume less.

Others may find their eating patterns remain the same while their thinking around food changes. In this respect, mindful eating is an equalizer, allowing us to find a balance in how we relate to food. We each have our own attitudes and patterns of behavior around food, whether this is due to genetics, circumstances, or family conditioning.

Awareness of those origins provides the foundation for mindful eating, but the only way to understand our relationship with food is to spend time with that relationship. Mindfulness inserts a pause to help us be aware of our own decision-making.

Only when we stop to notice this chain of events can we start to change our behavior or thinking about food. This is a skill mindfulness affords, meaning we can consider our food selections in advance. In bringing more planning to our grocery list, restaurant menu, or kitchen, we are less inclined to feel any guilt or shame about our balanced choices.

In observing the mind in this way, we can free ourselves from emotions that fuel our habits. Imagine what it would be like to no longer be led by our inner dialogue around food. Imagine instead having a more balanced, carefree attitude, freed from the shackles of poor eating habits.

As we step away from all the unhealthy thinking around food, we cultivate a sustainable and balanced approach to the way we eat and the way we look.

Essentially, we get to re-educate ourselves. We get to enjoy our food again. How often do you think about food on any given day? You might travel by a fruit stand on your commute, for example.

Or maybe all you can think about while heading home is that ripe avocado waiting for you on the counter. Food is simply the object of our fascination and cravings.

It has no power over us in and of itself. The power rests in our emotions, our conditioning, and our decisions. Without understanding the thoughts and emotions involved in our relationship with food, there can be no room for change.

One of the biggest realizations that comes with mindful eating is how much we are influenced by what we think and feel. Food is fuel. We need it to live. Once we get a handle on our thoughts and emotions around food, we weaken its hold over us and learn not to judge ourselves so harshly.

The benefits of mindful eating will, of course, be subjective. Someone weighing lbs. could be eating healthier than someone at lbs. Thinness does not equal healthy in the same way fatness cannot be conflated to mean unhealthy. It's with this kind of perspective—this kind of awareness—that we come to discover renewed confidence, freedom, and self-acceptance.

Ultimately, the more we are in the body and less in the thinking mind, the more we are able to contribute to a more enjoyable experience and a healthier connection to our food and our bodies. The scientific research exploring mindful eating is primarily focused on weight loss and recovery from disordered eating, and it generally shows a positive benefit.

When you eat mindfully and become more attuned to your body, however, you can start to feel how different foods affect you physically, mentally, and emotionally. And that can make it much easier to make the switch to healthier food choices.

Many of us only really pay attention to how food makes us feel when it causes us to be physically ill. How much more energy and enthusiasm do you have after a meal or snack? How do you feel after you swallow the food? How do you feel in five minutes, in an hour, or several hours after eating?

How do you feel generally throughout the day? To start tracking the relationship between what you eat and how it makes you feel, try the following exercise:. Keeping a record on your phone or in a notebook can heighten your awareness of how the meals and snacks you eat affect your mood and well-being.

For example, you may find that when you eat carbohydrates you feel heavy and lethargic for hours. Therefore, carb-heavy meals become something you try to avoid. Of course, different foods affect us all differently, according to factors such as genetics and lifestyle.

So it may involve some trial and error to find the foods and combinations of food that work best for you. The following exercise can help you discover how different food combinations and quantities affect your well-being:.

Keep a record of everything you observe in yourself as you experiment with your eating habits. Continue experimenting with different types, combinations, and amounts of food for two or three weeks, tracking how you feel mentally, physically, and emotionally. Many of us frequently mistake feelings of anxiety, stress, loneliness, or boredom for hunger pangs and use food in an attempt to cope with these feelings.

The discomfort you feel reminds you that you want something, need something to fill a void in your life. That void could be a better relationship, a more fulfilling job, or a spiritual need.

When you continually try to fill that void with food, though, you inevitably overlook your real hungers. And then the real hunger or need will return.

Do you eat to feel better or relieve stress? Swing by the drive-through after a tough day at work? No matter how powerless or out of control you feel around food, there are plenty of things you can do to find more satisfying ways to feed your feelings or fill an emotional void.

To learn more, see: Emotional Eating. Your purpose for eating will shift from the intention of feeling full of food, to the intention of feeling full of energy and vitality. Oxygen fuels the body and breathing deeply can increase your energy and sense of well-being.

As you breathe deeply, you also relax and relieve stress and tension , common imitators of false hunger. Listen to HelpGuide's deep breathing meditation. Tips to help you and your family eat delicious, healthy food on a tight budget.

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