Mindful Eating - Using more mindfulness to achieve a feel good weight

More and more often we are confronted with the word “mindfulness” – be it mindfulness guides and advice books in the library, workshops or apps that are offered in abundance – and usually in the same breath with meditation. While there was a time that these words were primarily associated with stories of Buddhist monks, meditation has found its way not only into various psychotherapy and coaching approaches, but also into everyday life.

So what is the principle behind it, how does mindfulness work? The following table gives you an overview:

Basically, mindfulness is about consciously experiencing the here and now without judging it. One should face the situation with openness and curiosity, as if it were the first time, and accept the present, even if it is associated with negative elements. The focus is on observing.

But why should we deal with the topic of mindfulness at all, what are the effects it is said to have?

Various studies have shown that mindfulness exercises have a positive effect on both the physical and mental levels:

• Reduction of stress level (Find out here how stress affects your body)
• Lowering blood pressure and slowing the heart rate
• Strengthening the immune system 
• Increase concentration
• Increase goodwill

In principle, any activity, such as breathing, running or brushing your teeth, can be turned into a mindfulness exercise in which the autopilot is to be consciously switched off – even eating can be perceived in a new way.

Due to the fast pace of today’s world, we are increasingly eating our meals on the go, under time pressure or on the side.

The focus is therefore usually somewhere else – be it on the mobile phone, the screen or the morning newspaper.

Many people can hardly correctly assess the portion size that is actually optimal for their body – they either eat too much or too little. This can have various causes, which often flow into each other:  

“Eat up your plate, otherwise the sun won’t shine tomorrow”, “Do you really want to get a second plate, you glutton?“ and “Lunch is at noon.”: Very early on, we are taught to eat certain amounts of certain foods at certain times – the result: we hardly listen to our “gut feeling” – often we no longer know whether hunger or habit is the driving force for our appetite. The ability to feed “intuitively” is lost.

The consumer orientation of our society leads to an excess of offers: there is always an abundance of food available, the tempting candy shelves and XXL packages tempt us to buy and eat more than our bodies actually need. (You want to learn more about how to avoid these “traps” in the supermarket? Then go to our articles about smart shopping!).

At the same time, the world of work is becoming more and more stressful and fast food eaten “on the side” is the order of the day. Of course, if there is no focus, there is no awareness of the amount we are eating.

Comfort chocolate after an argument, cravings for fatty foods when stressed: it is hardly uncommon for people to reach for food in order to influence their feelings. This is because when the blood sugar level rises and you “reward” yourself with food, the mood also rises. However, linking food with emotions is a major problem in the development of overweight, obesity and various eating disorders such as bulimia nervosa or binge eating.

Reflecting on how you feel after eating and whether you were really physically hungry helps to find out whether food was used as a coping mechanism and you can actively take action against it directly.

It’s not uncommon for us to find ourselves activating an all-or-nothing mindset when it comes to certain foods: the chocolate has to be “earned”, the burger doesn’t fit into my diet and carbohydrates are “evil”.

Often we are still hungry, but the calorie calculation in our head keeps us from giving in to this feeling.

In doing so, the body gives us clear signals about how much we need, we just need to learn to understand them. What can help with this? Mindful eating!

Mindful eating is understood to mean the conscious, attentive preparation, perception and enjoyment of meals. The focus here is not achieving a specific weight goal, but the process of eating itself: what sensory stimuli do I perceive: what does the food taste and smell like, what consistency do the individual ingredients have and how does it change?

Mindful eating is designed to help people observe and recognise their own, mostly unconscious, behaviours and choices regarding food. In this way, a basis can be created to positively change one’s own approach to food in the long term and in a sustainable way.

The conscious examination of what we buy and what is finally on our plate has various advantages: if we direct our full attention to the meal, we perceive it in a much more differentiated way and the enjoyment is automatically increased. If we eat more carefully, we also eat more slowly.

Since the brain only registers  the signal that it’s “Full!” 20 to 30 minutes after the release of the satiety hormone leptin“, slower  eating can prevent oversaturation at the same time. We can perceive our feeling of satiety better and better over time.

“If we eat more mindfully, we perceive our feeling of satiety better.”

If we are mindful, emotions and habits also lose their power. These two aspects in particular have an enormous influence on our urge to get something “between our teeth” – whether it’s frustration eating after a stressful day at work or the bag of popcorn with the film, even though we’re not actually the least bit hungry.

Questions like “What does my body really need?” or “What do I actually want to satisfy right now – physical hunger or mental hunger?” can be answered better and better by mindful eating with a little practice.

Closely interwoven with this is the already mentioned intuitive eating.

The short answer: Yes.

The slightly longer answer: yes, but the focus on mindful eating should not be for a specific purpose, but on the food itself.

Mindful eating is not restrictive like a diet, it does not prohibit anything. Losing weight is therefore more of a side effect, but one that occurs quite frequently. For example, a study by researcher Michail Mantzios showed that mindful eating negatively correlated with fat and sugar consumption, simply put: the more mindful you eat, the healthier you eat. The working group led by Christian H. Jordan also found that mindfulness leads the participants to eat less impulsively, to eat fewer calories and also to choose healthier snacks (Click here for the big Upfit Snack Check).

So it turns out: through mindful eating, we give our body exactly what it needs – not too much and not too little. After all, there is no perfect diet that works for everyone: Everyone has different physical conditions, preferences and priorities. However, mindful eating can help any person establish a more positive eating behavior.

The Upfit nutrition plans respond to these individual characteristics and adapt optimally to you and your preferences. Create your own personal nutrition plan here!

Next we will show you how to add more mindfulness to your diet routine and soon you will become a mindful eating expert.

To begin with: mindful eating is a matter of practice. So don’t be frustrated if you keep falling back into your usual patterns at the beginning or you digress during the meal. However, if you stay on the ball and practice constantly, over time you will establish new, more mindful behaviour.

Try the following exercise and let yourself be surprised by your diverse perceptions:

Grab a raisin (for all non-raisin fans: you can alternatively resort to a nut, a grape or similar) and proceed step by step:

Touch: Close your eyes and feel the raisin – how does the surface feel? How firm is it?

Smell: Bring the raisin to your nose – what do you perceive?

See: Look closely at the raisin – does it shine or is it rather dull?

Taste: What consistency does the raisin have? Which aromas unfold as soon as you bite on it? What do you taste when you have it on your tongue?

You will notice that even with a small raisin (or nut) you can perceive the different components much more intensively – it is only important to take your time.

Here are some tips and tricks that you can try out for your next shopping and meal: first of all, decide on one. If you are more experienced, you can always expand your mindful eating and use several tricks.

Our body knows very well what exactly it needs in order to be optimally supplied with all nutrients. However, it is often not so easy to distinguish whether the brain is just tricking us into thinking we need to eat something (for example, at the sight of the delicious cake on the table or the delicious smell emanating from the bakery on the street corner) or whether it is actual hunger.

We usually eat too fast. However, if you allow yourself more time to eat, you can not only enjoy the meal more, but often a smaller portion is already enough for you.

Chewing things through is not your thing? Then you can pay attention to this by mindful eating: use your chewing muscles to get all the flavours out of your meal.

When we eat too quickly, we sometimes shovel too much into our mouths before the satiety signal can even reach the brain. With these tips, you can consciously take action against it in the future:

The more colourful and noisy our environment is, the faster we will be distracted from our meal. Since attention and mindfulness go hand in hand, it helps you to to create a quiet environment.

Food is available to us almost 24/7 – and usually in abundance: Full supermarket shelves with a huge selection mean that we often take this availability for granted and the handling of food is often careless – we waste, throw away and hardly value what we take in. An appreciative approach especially helps to eat more consciously – in the sense of mindful eating.

You will always come back to situations where your autopilot takes over during the meal or you do 10 other things at the same time. The so-called STOP strategy helps to push your mindfulness and to slow down your everyday life.

Mindful eating is a great way to deal more intensively with your own physical and mental needs and to question automated eating behavior and decisions. When you integrate a more mindful way to your daily meals, you will not only feel more pleasure and joy in eating, but you can also reach the optimal body weight for you – because if you learn to listen to your body signals and interpret them correctly, you will feed your body exactly the foods and amounts it needs to function optimally.

1. Vasudha Gidugu & Marjorie L. Jacobs (2019): Empowering individuals with mental illness to develop healthy eating habits through mindful eating: results of a program evaluation, Psychology, Health & Medicine, 24:2, 177-186
2. Mantzios, M., Egan, H., Hussain, M. et al. (2018): Mindfulness, self-compassion, and mindful eating in relation to fat and sugar consumption: an exploratory investigation. Eat Weight Disorder 23,833-840
3. Jordan, C. H., Wang, W., Donatoni, L, and Meier, B. P. (2014): Mindful eating: Trait and state mindfulness predict healthier eating behavior. Personality and Individual Differences 68.1, 107-111.
4. Fleischhaker C., Sixt B., Schulz E. (2010): Mindfulness. In: DBT-A Dialectical-behavioral therapy for adolescents. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
5. Schandry, R. (2016): Biological Psychology. 4th edition, Beltz, Weinheim, Basel.