What is Mindful Eating?

The concept of “conscious awareness”, which is the Turkish equivalent of the word “mindfulness” that we have heard a lot in the last two decades, is a term that means being able to perceive the moment and consciously stay in the moment.
Mindful eating (eating mindfulness) is an important concept that emerged by examining the concept of mindfulness on eating behavior.
Mindful eating is an individual achievement developed to focus on the smell, taste and texture of the food we consume at that moment, to understand why and how eating behavior occurs, to be conscious enough to distinguish between physical/physiological hunger and satiety, to recognize the effect of our emotions and thoughts on eating behavior and to be able to eat with full awareness by ruling out such internal factors.
The aim of eating mindfulness is not to track calories, but to live in the moment with full consciousness and to help people enjoy what they eat.

How is Mindful Eating Practiced?

Mindful eating, or mindful eating, encourages people to act consciously.
Mindfulness helps to reduce stress levels, allowing people to make sense of their current experiences without judgment.
Being able to stay in the moment and perceive the food consumed at that moment can prevent many eating behavior problems and the diseases caused by these problems (such as obesity, hypertension, diabetes).
In this way, mindful eating can fill in where traditional dietary approaches fall short.
There are various methods developed by experts to make eating mindful.
It is important to be mindful in your life in general so that you can control all food-related processes.
However, eating mindfulness training, which has been developed to keep your relationship with food at a healthy level, focuses on the process from the moment you establish a relationship with food to the act of eating.
It allows you to focus more comprehensively by evaluating the following processes:

• Choosing what you eat: From food shopping to food preparation, this process enables you to consciously choose your food.
• Being able to recognize why you eat: It is very important to know why you eat the food you choose.
  It allows you to observe the effects of factors such as hunger, satiety and stress on eating behavior without judgment.
• Being able to recognize how much you eat: It allows you to recognize the amount of food you consume during a meal and aims to control it over time.
• Being able to observe how you eat: Stressful and busy living conditions are among the reasons for fast eating.
  In order to create eating awareness, it is important to control the speed of eating, observe the eating behavior without judgment and make correct inferences.

The Eating Awareness Scale, which was created to develop eating awareness, was first created in 2006 and examined through various sub-items.
As a result of the adaptation of the original of this scale, in which the factors that cause overeating (texture, taste, smell of food, environmental factors, emotional triggers) are questioned, to Turkish in 2017, the factors affecting eating awareness are examined through the following items:

• Disinhibition
• Emotional eating,
• Eating control,
• Focus
• Eating gisiplini,
• Awareness,
• Interference

What are the Ways to Increase Eating Awareness?

There are many strategies that can help you develop mindful eating habits.
One of the most common practices is meditation.
You can improve your relationship with food by practicing short periods of meditation before eating.
During meditation practices, you are asked to focus on your breathing.
The main goal is to be aware of the moment and the environment, to recognize bodily impulses and respond to them correctly.
Breathing and smiling exercises are examples of these.
By focusing on your breath during this practice, it is aimed to become aware of your current feelings and thoughts, to observe your emotions without judgment and to make peace with them.
Another example of a frequently preferred mindfulness practice is body scanning.
Body scanning is a formal practice that aims to focus on bodily sensations in a systematic way, guided by an expert or recording.
Body scanning is a preferred method for the treatment of eating disorders such as binge eating syndrome.
Some of the actions we perform during the day can become a form of meditation when practiced mindfully.
One of the best examples is walking meditation.
In this practice, you are asked to focus on the present moment in a place of your choice and synchronize your steps with your breath.
It is important to focus on your breath as you watch your steps and to observe without judgment how you feel during and after the walk.

What are the Benefits of Mindful Eating?

Eating mindfulness aims for a healthier and more mindful life by helping to create conscious eating habits.
The benefits of mindful eating to the human body include

• Mindful eating can help eliminate eating behavior problems as it reduces stress levels by staying in the moment.
  Mindful eating is part of living in a conscious way.
  In this way, it can also contribute to living a more mindful life.
• It is known that it is more difficult for individuals to make healthy food choices at times of high stress.
  At such times, people generally prefer foods with a higher energy content (sweets, fatty foods).
  During mindful consumption, on the other hand, the preference for natural, whole foods is higher.
  Therefore, people who are able to create eating awareness become individuals who tend to eat healthier.
• During mindful eating, your eating speed slows down.
  The benefits of slow eating include reduced energy intake.
  This reduces the risk of obesity and obesity-related diseases.
  Among the benefits of slow eating, it is known that people with eating disorders can better remember their eating episodes and positively affect the healing process of the disease.
• In diseases such as diabetes, eating mindfulness can help maintain blood sugar balance and prevent disease progression.
• Individuals with higher mindfulness may have a lower risk of developing depression.

Emotional Eating and Mindful Eating

For many people, bad emotions and experiences can cause loss of appetite.
In some cases, a condition called emotional eating occurs and individuals perceive their emotional state as a signal to eat and exhibit uncontrolled eating behavior.
This can turn into an unhealthy cycle as the person continues to uncontrollably eat foods that they have identified as “comforting” for themselves over time.
When a person unwittingly seeks well-being in the physiological effects of food, this can become a habit.
In this case, it is not possible to eat consciously.
An individual with eating awareness can easily distinguish situations where they develop the urge to eat because of their emotions from real hunger (physical hunger).
He or she realizes what nutrients his or her body needs and can control his or her reactions to hunger.
In emotional eating, this is the opposite.
By developing healthy eating habits through mindful eating practices, people can reorganize their relationship with food and get rid of emotional eating.
In many studies, individuals with emotional eating disorder have been able to regulate their negative emotions with food through mindful eating training.

Frequently Asked Questions