Mindful eating, according to a Buddhist concept, is in accordance with being mindfulness. It is considered a form of meditation that allows you to conceptualize with your emotions and physical feelings. Once practiced, it can help you cope with different health conditions, including eating disorder, anxiety, depression and other food-associated behaviors.

Being mindful with what you eat means a state of having full attention to what you eat, your body’s needs and especially, cravings.

For someone who doesn’t have slightest idea where to start, you can exercise mindful eating through these practices:

• Mind over matter. This means you let your body catch up with your brain. During meal time, it is a matter of listening to your body’s signal about when to slow down, eat, stop and knowing that the body says it’s full. The best way to synchronize your body to your brain is to take time to eat. Slowing down during meal time gives your body the chance to hear signals about the right amount of food to eat and learning its indication of being full.
• Get to know your body language. In terms of mindful eating, it is a plus that you know the body’s personal hunger signal. You can differentiate emotional want to body’s needs. Emotional hunger means healing from stress, sadness and frustration. On the contrary, true mindful eating is listening to body’s signal for hunger. It’s a need versus want. Once you can distinguish the difference between the two, you can learn to control stress eating.
• Creating smart kitchen atmosphere. Having an organized kitchen area motivates you towards healthy eating habits. It helps you eat something more healthful that is beneficial to your body and weight. To learn the kind of food you need rather than you want gives you one step closer into understanding your motivation. You can finally eat the foods that has useful content and highly nutritious rather than those emotionally comforting foods which are very unhealthy and can ruin your body image.

When you connect deeply with your food, you become mindful on what goes in your mouth. You start considering where the food comes from instead of thinking your meal as an end product. When you attend seriously to your plate, meal time becomes sacred to you. You thought food as an attraction instead of distraction. Every meal you take, allows you to enjoy and relish the food more. The more you eat the food you need and the more you listen to your body’s hunger signal, the more you become mindful on your behavior towards food.

There’s nothing wrong with giving in to your cravings once in a while. Just make sure to get back on track. Becoming mindful eater comes with lots of health benefits and can be your way towards your weight loss goal.