Embrace Mindful Eating: 10 Steps to Transform Your Relationship with Food

Welcome, mindful eaters! Mindful eating is not just a trend; it's a transformative practice that can revolutionize the way you interact with food and your body. Let's dive into 10 steps you can take to cultivate a more mindful approach to eating:

1. Awareness: Start by becoming aware of your body's hunger and fullness cues. Tune in to your body's signals to guide your eating habits.

   1. It's important to keep in mind that if there are certain hormonal imbalances between our "hunger" hormone ghrelin, and our "satiety" hormone leptin, hunger cues may not be as active or even noticeable.

   2. In those who are chronic cannabis users, hunger cues can be almost completely undetectable. This can present as a lack of or overactive appetite.

   3. Additionally, imbalances in leptin (i.e. low leptin) has been associated with increased incidence of obesity and difficulty maintaining weight.

2. Savor Each Bite: Slow down and savor the flavors, textures, and aromas of your food. Pay attention to the experience of eating without distractions.

   1. This can be easier said than done. Our daily lives are full of distractions, stress, and a percieved lack of time, which leads to eating our meals quicker. What's the problem with eating too fast? Your digestive tract normally sends signals to your brain about fullness, but when you rush through your meal, your brain doesn't recieve the signal until long after your GI tract is actually full. This leads to overeating, which can then lead to weight gain.

3. Gratitude: Cultivate gratitude for the nourishment your food provides. Take a moment to appreciate the effort that went into producing your meal.

   1. A lot of work is put into harvesting, cleaning, and packaging our foods. By the time it has reached your local grocery store, it has touched the hands of countless people.

   2. It's important to take a moment to reflect on the time, effort and labor it took to get the food to the point of purchase and be grateful for the people who carry out that work so you don't have to.

4. Engage Your Senses: Use all your senses to fully experience your meal. Notice the colors, smells, sounds, and even the sounds of your food.

   1. This can be a meditative experience, but it can also teach you a lot about the diversity, or lack thereof, of foods in your regular meals.

   2. It's important to try to include as many whole (unprocessed) foods of as many different colors as possible into each and every meal. This will help you take advantage of the antioxidants and micronutrients unique to each of these colors.

   3. For example, yellow, orange and red foods are high in beta-carotene, a version of vitamin A, which is a potent antioxidant important for maintaining the integrity of your skin, hair, and the lining of your digestive tract.

5. Chew Thoroughly: Chew your food slowly and thoroughly. This not only aids digestion but also allows you to fully appreciate the taste of your food.

   1. The importance of chewing our foods as thoroughly as possible has been overlooked in the treatment of so many common GI conditions like gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), gastritis, and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

   2. Your digestive tract produces many different hormones and proteins that get released to help break down your food to make it easier for your body to absorb the nutrients.

   3. If you don't chew your food thoroughly (until it's pretty much mush), your digestive enzymes may not be able to perform their job as required, and you can experience excessive fullness soon after eating, excessive burping and bloating, as well as undigested food in your stool.

6. Avoid Multitasking: Focus solely on eating during meal times. Avoid distractions like watching TV or scrolling through your phone.

   1. I think it's amazing that we, as humans, attempt to multitask as often as we do. We have so much faith in our bodies! However, let's be real, when you're trying to get a bite of food in but at the same time you're stressed out finishing other work, angry, or otherwise not in a calm state, your "fight or flight" response will block digestion.

   2. This is because if you're trying to run from a bear, it's not advantageous for your body to send blood and circulation to yourr digestive system. Instead, it sends that much needed oxygen to your limbs, brain, lungs and heart, and what happens to the food you were digesting? Now it's going to sit there for longer than it needs to, causing discomfort. Sometimes patient's describe this as having a "rock" in the pit of their stomach, or it manifests as excessive bloating, pain, reflux or gas.

   3. Slow down, take 3 deep breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth, and concentrate on enjoying your meal. Your digestion will thank you for it and you might absorb more nutrients from your food!

7. Listen to Your Body: Learn to distinguish between physical hunger and emotional hunger. Eat when you're truly hungry and stop when you're satisfied.

   1. Listening to your body will often be the first step you take to practice mindful eating. Eating is a behavior, and changes in eating behavior are determined by many different factors.

   2. Eating behavior can be deeply engrained and tied to mood dysregulation, and trauma, making them even more difficult to modify.

   3. However, sometimes, hunger can be addressed simply by making sure you're adequately hydrated. Next time you're feeling hungry but you recently ate or your stomach isn't growling, have a tall glass of water (ideally with trace minerals and/or electrolytes) and see how you feel after that. Your hunger may well just be thirst!

8. Practice Mindful Shopping: Make conscious choices when selecting your food. Consider where your food comes from and how it will nourish your body.

   1. Indeed, this can take form in many different ways, and you may already make conscious eating choices based on your ethical or religious beliefs. In addition to those, you may wish to make your choice based on the quality of the food you consume (i.e., grass-fed beef vs conventional, or wild-caught fish vs farm-raised).

   2. While wild caught and grass fed sources may be ideal for many reasons (stay tuned for a future blog post about this!), you may also be on a budget or may be trying to reduce your exposure to food-bound chemicals like pesticides, and those will guide different food choices.

   3. Whatever motivates your choices, having an understanding and appreciation of where your food comes from will not only help you make more informed decisions, but will help you be even more grateful for all that was necessary to bring that food to your favorite grocery store.

9. Be Kind to Yourself: Practice self-compassion and let go of guilt associated with eating. Treat yourself with kindness and understanding.

   1. This can be intimately tied with past experiences with food. If you are especially finding it difficult to practice this step in mindfulness, it might be important to talk to a qualified mental health professional to identify the root cause and learn ways to work through those blockages so you can get back to enjoying such a basic need in human existence; eating!

10. Reflect on Your Choices: After eating, reflect on how your body feels. Notice how different foods affect your energy levels and mood.

    1. This is so important, particularly when it comes to identifying food sensitivies and leaky gut. So many people walk around with chronic fatigue, bloating, anxiety, depression, constipation, diarrhea, abdominal pain, chronic inflammation, and joint pain, and are surprised to learn that the cause, or an important contributing factor, has been consuming foods that, uniquely to them, increase inflammation in their gut and tax their immune system.

    2. Staying in tune with your body's reactions to food is crucial, and can be what make's or breaks a successful treatment for your health concerns.

By incorporating these 10 steps into your daily routine, you can embark on a fulfilling journey towards mindful eating. Embrace the practice with an open heart and a curious mind, and watch as your relationship with food and yourself transforms for the better.

To start your journey to mindful eating and begin taking steps to substantially improve your digestion, mental health, and overall well-being, head over to the "Booking" tab and schedule your initial patient consultation with Natural Care Doc today!