How to Start Mindful Eating for Weight Loss

For most of my life I was on a weight loss journey, following all the eating plans, workout routines, eating “healthy” but struggled to get the results I wanted. I had no idea what mindful eating was until about 10 years ago I stumbled on a Creative Live nutrition class taught by Daria Rose, neuroscientist and author of the book Foodist.

She mentioned concepts I had never heard much about before – which was surprising because I has been obsessively researching weight loss for years. But this was my first real introduction to the missing link – the power of our mind and thinking when it comes to weight loss. I was hooked.

After this I really started to apply the principles of mindful eating, and saw a huge shift. Not only did I realize how many calories I was consuming without even realizing it (so now that I wasn’t – I was naturally eating less) I had so much more awareness and intentionality around food which allowed me to feel so much more in control.

I noticed habits that were definitely keeping me from my goal weight – popping bites of leftovers in my mouth, eating mediocre foods at parties just because they were there, overeating, snacking in my car when I wasn’t hungry….the list goes on.

So here I’m sharing an overview of what mindful eating is, and how you can get started with it!

Know WHAT you’re eating and WHY – so you can make more intentional and informed decisions, creating an overall lifestyle that you’re confident with and committed too

So..What is Mindful Eating?

To me, the practice of mindful eating means knowing WHAT you’re eating and WHY – so you can make more intentional and informed decisions, creating an overall lifestyle that you’re confident with and committed too. It means paying attention to what’s going into your mouth all day – and deciding if you want it to be there, and being honest about those decisions and how they are impacting your goals and results. 

Mindful eating is also the opposite of mindless eating. Mindless eating can be defined as eating with no real thought, intention or plan behind it, kind of like I mentioned above. Sometimes it can fall under emotional eating if we’re trying to avoid or create an emotion, otherwise it can be something we don’t even realize we’re doing because we’re so disconnected from the present moment. 

For example, have you ever gone into a Mexican restaurant where they put chips and salsa or queso on the table, you’re drinking, talking, laughing, and all of a sudden the chips are gone but you barely remember eating any of them? This is mindless eating. It happens many times when we’re doing another activity while eating and more focused on that while simultaneously putting food in our mouth (watching TV, talking, driving, etc.) Our mind is not present – hence the term mind “less” eating.

Sometimes we’ve been practicing this for so long it’s second nature. But if we’re not careful it can prevent reaching and maintaining a healthy weight and even lead to weight gain.  It can also lead to us feeling out of control or powerless around food. 

Benefits of Mindful Eating – Weight Loss and More!

Helps you reach weight loss goals (and maintain them!)

When we practice mindful eating (paying attention to everything going into our mouth, questioning it and making sure we want it there) we ‘re naturally consuming fewer calories and are reducing food intake while enjoying the taste of the food more – a win-win! If weight loss if your goal, this can help you get there without the need for restrictive or fad diets. It encourages us to take an honest look at not just what we’re consuming but why – which makes it a lot harder to turn a blind eye to it.

Can help us minimize emotional eating and feel more in control around food

We can’t change something we’re not aware of – and half the time when we struggle with emotional eating we don’t even realize it because we aren’t slowing down and paying attention enough to realize that’s what’s happening. When we begin to practice mindful eating we start to identify the times we’re eating throughout the day out of boredom, restlessness, sadness, etc. We can then question if we want to continue doing this and feeding the habit, or explore what’s happening and choose a different route. 

Increased Confidence 

Whenever we develop and practice a new skill, we often feel more confidence because we are proving to ourselves that we can figure out and accomplish something we’ve never done before. We’re also helping ourselves grow, evolve and make progress towards our goals.

Can Improve your relationship with food and yourself

Our relationship with food and ourselves is defined by “our thoughts about it.” When we practice mindful eating and feel like we have a solid strategy in place that helps us feel more confident and in control, it’s easier for us to think positive thoughts about food and ourself, naturally improving our relationship.

Helps you develop consistent healthy eating habits and an overall healthy lifestyle

When we pay full attention and are aware of the food choices we’re making and the food we’re putting into our body, it’s much easier to consistently follow a health plan once we have one. In working with clients and talking to family and friends, I would say 50% of the time “going off track” is due to not paying attention and all of a sudden consuming one or a bunch of things not on their plan or that they had decided not to eat. Then once we’ve deviated, sometimes it’s much harder to get back on quickly..if at all. (If this is something you struggle with – check out my post on staying on track with weight loss over the weekends.)

Can help minimize binge eating

When we’re paying attention to what we’re thinking, feeling and doing, it’s a whole lot easier to keep it from spiraling out of control. I used to be a binge eater. I would actually start dreaming about my binges early in the week, usually when I had a stressful or annoying event, craving or temptation. I would think – this weekend I can’t wait to eat ____. And visualize myself basically numbing my emotions in it.

Initially, I barely noticed this, and if I did I didn’t think it was anything I could change. But sure enough, on most weekends I would often find myself binging on popcorn, cookies, takeout or whatever else I had in my fridge and freezer. But once I started eating more mindfully, the increased awareness around food spilled into other areas, including my thinking.

I started to notice those thoughts as they would pop into my head, and question them. Were they benefitting me? Was that really something I wanted to be spending my time thinking about? Were these thoughts and actions helping me to become who I wanted to be? No, no and no. So I slowly started to change them – and my actions started to change too.

Allows us to eat more intuitively

When we intentionally decide to SLOW DOWN and listen to our body, we can actually start to identify our body’s hunger and fullness cues, something many of us can’t currently do because we’re snacking/grazing all day long (breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack……that used to be me too!) But a crucial part of weight loss is eating for fuel, and eating the amount of energy our body needs, and not much more. If we have no idea what that is – weight loss is going to be much harder. 

How to Start Mindful Eating for Weight Loss (And other benefits!)

Make an intentional decision to start paying attention to what you’re thinking and doing when it comes to eating habits

1. Make an intentional decision. The first step is an intentional decision to become more aware of what you’re eating by deciding to start paying attention.
2. Decide how you want to do it. Once you’ve made the decision to do it and committed to it and have a solid reason for sticking with it – decide how you will start paying attention to the food you’re eating. Some of the ways that have worked best for my clients and I are:
   • Keeping a food log for 3-5 days, tracking EVERYTHING you eat or drink with complete honestly, along with why you’re eating it and your hunger level.
   • Use an online tracker like MyFitnessPal and again, honestly log everything for. a certain period of time, reflecting back at the end of each day on what you ate, why and how you felt.
   • Follow a specific plan like my 7-Day Health Reset and fully commit to doing and eating what the plan says. Almost very time I have someone do this – they come back to me and can’t believe how much mindless eating they were doing!
3. Ask the four mindful eating questions.

Once you’ve decided how to pay more attention – I encourage you to ask yourself three questions each time you eat:

• What am I about to eat?
• Why am I eating it?
• Do I like my reasons?
• Is it aligned with my goals, and who I want to be MOST and not only in the moment?

4. Make an intentional decision from there

5. Evaluate, practice and repeat! If you need more help with this – let’s talk! I can help you go from being a mindless eater to a mindful one in no time.

Making Mindful Eating a Habit

Repetition and consistency

Make an intentional decision to practice this on a daily basis with every meal and snack – I do! When you make it part of your daily routine and repeat it, it will eventually be second nature and easier to do than not to do. When I go to a party or out to dinner, this has been a game changer for me – it helps me keep from overeating or eating foods I don’t even love (because they’re in front of me and everyone else is eating them) and eat less overall.

Welcome challenges and work on overcoming them

Challenges are part of incorporating any new habit, so expect they will appear and don’t make them a problem! For every challenge there is a solution and strategy, and once you figure it out you can apply it in other areas of your health and life. Every time we overcome a challenge we get smarter and stronger, and have a new skill set that continuously helps up become the healthiest and best version of ourselves.

Start small

Pick one thing you want to get started with – maybe it’s just logging your food, committing to a specific plan for 3 days, or simply paying attention to whats going into your mouth all day and making sure you want it there. 

After YEARS of not practicing this approach, being at a higher body weight than I wanted, uncomfortable and feeling out of control around food – I now have a consistent mindful eating practice and have seen the positive impact it’s had on my weight, but also my mental and emotional health.  I’m not perfect, but do strive to be better with all of this everyday – and you can too!

Need some help or guidance with incorporating tips and tricks like this into your life? Sign up for a free coaching session or grab my Free 7-Day Health Reset and practice this with my guidance!