One of the reasons people look into mindful eating is because they are struggling with emotional eating. If you tend to eat more when you are stressed or bored or have different eating habits during these times in your life, you might be an emotional eater.
While emotional eating is not always bad—in fact, sometimes it can be a good way to deal with difficult emotions—it can become problematic when it leads to overeating or binge eating. If you find yourself in this situation, mindfulness might be able to help.
What is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness is a form of meditation that allows you to focus on the present moment and be aware of your thoughts and feelings without judgment. It can help you learn to control your reactions to emotions and thoughts, which can be helpful when it comes to emotional eating.
Mindfulness can help you in two ways when it comes to emotional eating.
First, it can help you be more aware of your emotions and why you are eating. This can help you make better choices about what to eat and when to eat it. For example, if you are bored, instead of mindlessly eating a bag of chips, you might be more aware of your boredom and decide to do something else that will help you feel better in the moment.
Second, mindfulness can help you control your reactions to emotions. If you are feeling stressed, mindfulness can help you find a way to deal with that stress without turning to food. For example, you might take a few deep breaths or go for a walk instead of eating.
How Mindfulness Helps with Emotional Eating
If you want to try mindfulness, there are a few things you can do to get started. You don’t have to do all of these things at once—start with one or two and see how they work for you.
You Eat Slower and Can Tell When You’re Full
It can actually take up to 20 minutes for your brain to send signals to your body that you are full. This is why if you rush through meals, you are bound to eat more than your body needs and feel uncomfortable.
With mindful eating, your eating is much slower and you pay attention to your body and thoughts the entire time. You are not caught up in the latest Netflix special to realize you were full 10 chips ago. So, even if your reason for eating those chips was emotional reasons, you don’t finish off the bag without thinking twice about it.
You Listen to Your Body More
Your body knows what it needs, even if your brain is saying otherwise. If you’re used to emotional eating, you might not be in touch with your bodily cues at all. You might eat when you’re not hungry or continue eating when you’re already full.
But, with mindful eating, you learn to listen to your body more, which means you’ll start to eat only when you’re hungry and you’ll stop when you’re full. This can help you avoid overeating and the feelings of guilt that come with it.
You Taste Your Food More
When you’re emotionally eating, you’re not really paying attention to the taste or texture of your food. You’re just trying to stuff down as much as you can as quickly as possible.
However, with mindful eating, you learn to savor your food and pay attention to all the different flavors. This can help you enjoy your food more and be more satisfied with smaller portions.
You’re More Aware of Your Emotions
One of the best things about mindfulness is that it helps you be more aware of your emotions. When you’re not used to paying attention to your emotions, it’s easy to stuff them down with food.
But, when you’re more aware of your emotions, you can start to deal with them in a healthy way. For example, if you’re feeling sad, you might cry or call a friend instead of turning to food. If you’re feeling stressed, you might go for a walk or take a yoga class.
Paying attention to your emotions can help you find healthy ways to cope with them, which can lead to less emotional eating overall.
You Develop Coping Skills
Emotional eating is closely tied to anxiety, stress, procrastination, or boredom. Mindful eating and mindfulness, in general, can help you learn some positive coping skills for these emotions, and understand when you eat out of boredom, and when you eat because of hunger.
For example, if you find yourself bored and snacking more often than usual, try to find something else to do that will occupy your time. If you’re stressed, try some deep breathing exercises or meditation. If you’re anxious, try to find a way to relax and calm your mind.
Learning these coping skills can help you break the cycle of emotional eating and find other ways to deal with your emotions. This is also one of the reasons experts highly recommend you keep a journal of your mindful eating process. You can track what you eat, why you ate, and when you stopped. You start to see trends about when you tend to emotionally eat. As you start to see these patterns, you learn to work on developing other coping skills that have nothing to do with eating.
You Become More Accepting of Yourself
One of the main reasons people turn to emotional eating is because they are trying to comfort themselves. They might be upset about their weight, their job, or a fight with a friend.
Mindfulness can help you become more accepting of yourself. This doesn’t mean you have to like everything about yourself, but it does mean that you’re more likely to treat yourself with kindness and compassion.
This can be a hard concept to understand, but it’s important to remember that mindfulness is all about the present moment. It’s not about judging yourself for what you’ve done in the past or worrying about the future. It’s about being in the moment and accepting yourself, your thoughts, and your emotions.
Conclusion
If you’re struggling with emotional eating, mindfulness might be a helpful tool for you. It can help you be more aware of your emotions, deal with them in a healthy way, and develop some positive coping skills. Remember, mindfulness is all about the present moment, so try to focus on the here and now. Be kind to yourself and accept yourself for who you are. If you can do this, you’ll be one step closer to overcoming emotional eating.
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