5 tips to eat more mindfully | #3TipsTuesday (+ 2 extra tips)
It’s time for another 3 Tips Tuesday post! This week I thought I’d share with you some of my top tips to eat mindfully. I wanted to carry on with the magic “3” tips number but there are 2 additional ones that are too important to be forgotten.
Here are 5 simple tips (that I implemented myself or worked for my clients) to help you actually pay attention to what you eat and learn to stop when you’re full.
How to practice mindful eating: top 3 tips
1: Sit down and away from screens
Studies have shown that we tend to eat 5 to 10% more when we’re standing than when we sit at a table.
Regardless of how busy your day is, try to get away from your laptop and phone, sit down at a table and solely focus on eating your meal.
When you’re at home, eat away from your laptop or TV and make sitting down a habit, even if you’re just having a little snack. When you think about it, how many times a week do you nibble on some leftovers in front of the fridge or eat a little something whilst standing in the living room?
2: Slow down
As you probably know, eating slowly gives your brain times to send you a satiety signal. You’re going to say “yes, but how?”. Try this:
Make yourself chew a certain amount of times before swallowing
Eat with your non dominant hand
Put your fork and knife down between bites
3: Savour
Eating away from any screens and slowing down will help you practice one of the pillars of mindful eating: savouring your meals. Before you even take a bite, smell and look at the colours of the foods. Then, as you chew, focus on the taste and the texture. Is it enjoyable? Does it revive memories? Use all of your senses.
Of course, savouring a home cooked meal is much easier than doing this exercise with a supermarket sandwich on the go. The thing is, spending time cooking your food and arranging your plate will make you appreciate it even more, because of the effort you’ve put into it.
What I’ve realised on my mindful eating journey is that making your plate look good is as important as making your food taste good. Of course we don’t always have time but when you can, I highly encourage you to do it :)
4: From “I can’t have it” to “I can eat a piece”
The “all or nothing”, restrictive mentality is going against mindful eating because you’re telling yourself that you can’t have cake, until you crave it so much that you have a bite and now you think that you’ve messed up and may as well have the whole thing.
Did you want the whole cake? No. But you ate it all, most likely standing up and in a rush, because of this restrictive behaviour.
You can have a piece of cake, sit down and fully savour it :)
5: You don’t have to finish your plate
We’ve all been told when we were kids to finish our plate. We’re not kids anymore and we can perfectly save the rest of our meal for later.
The more you’ll learn to fully savour your meal and identify your satiety signals, the easier it will be to stop when you’re full, even if your plate isn’t empty.
Final words
Missed the previous 3 Tips Tuesday tips? Catch up below:
3 tips to start losing weight without tracking calories.
3 tips to be more confident in the gym
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