13 Unique Ways To Practice Mindful Eating For Weight Loss

Looking to master mindful eating for weight loss, but haven’t had any luck so far?

Here are 13 unique strategies that can help you find your way toward your fitness goals.

Losing weight is one of the biggest struggles for many people these days. And it requires some major life changes that often seem daunting.

One such necessary change is the habit of eating.

If you’ve been trying to get fitter, you might have an idea about the role food plays in shaping your health.

If eaten the right way, food can be a person’s best friend in their weight loss journey.

Eating habits can change the course of your health in as little time as a month.

I strongly believe that to build a new habit, a time period of 30 days is all our mind needs.

After that, you might need a few months before you achieve your fitness goals, but the habit you’ve formed will make sure you get to the end.

Today, the habit I’m touching upon is the one I believe in from the bottom of my heart.

For anyone trying to lose weight, this habit is the one they need to work on the most if they want to see results that last a lifetime.

We are here to talk about mindful eating.

Trust me when I say that it’s the one thing you need to imbibe in your soul if you want to get healthier.

After reading this post, you’ll have a good idea about what mindful eating is. And you will also know how to practice it to lose weight in a sustainable manner.

What Is Mindful Eating?

The term mindful eating is supposed to be self-explanatory.

As you might have guessed already, it’s about being attentive to your food.

Okay, cool.

So while eating something, we just need to make sure we’re being careful about what we eat, and how much we consume. Is that what it means?

Well, roughly….yeah, sure.

If you go by the definition, that’s all it might seem at first glance.

But if you delve a bit deeper, you’ll realize it’s not just the mere act of being mindful while you eat.

Mindful eating is all about connecting your senses to your gut and making every food-based decision taking your body’s needs into consideration.

The underlying depiction of mindful eating is vast, and if you manage to truly understand it, half your work here is done.

The process of acquiring your food in a mindful way can be roughly broken down into four steps:

Mindful Food Shopping

While shopping for food, you need to ask yourself whether you really need something.

Oftentimes, people struggling to lose weight end up making wrong choices at the grocery store, and as a result, find it hard to control their eating urges at home.

When reaching the packed food corner, you might find yourself piling up a lot of junk food, instead of picking just one packet or two.

This food shopping habit leads to weight gain.

In fact, the selection of unhealthy snacks while shopping, in a heavy quantity, might be what’s stopping you from losing weight.

So what is the right way to go about this?

• Make a grocery shopping list in advance.
• Sticking to the list while shopping.
• Controlling the quantity of food you buy.
• If you’re getting takeout or eating outside, ask yourself what your gut really needs, rather than ordering what you want to eat. (Or rather, getting a combination of both, something like a burger and an apple together. Who’s to say you can’t have both? It’s better than two burgers and then upsetting your stomach.)
• Equal focus on your nutritional needs and making your tongue happy.

Mindful Food Preparation

Cooking can make or break your fitness journey, and it all comes down to how you go about it.

The same pasta that people might consider bad for weight loss, can be turned into a healthy choice if you make it differently.

And the best thing is, the latter can taste just as amazing as the former.

This is the power of mindful food preparation, and it never ceases to amaze me.

In a nutshell, mindful food preparation looks something like this:

• Being in touch with your body’s needs while selecting what to cook.
• While selecting every ingredient, knowing its purpose and the value it adds to your dish.
• Controlling the quantity you cook, to avoid food wastage or the chances of overeating.
• The MOST important one – Enjoying the process. 🙂

Mindful Food Serving

While serving a meal, we need to take care of the quantity, as well as the quality of the food.

If you’re piling up more than what you need to eat, you’ll obviously overeat, and that’s not what we need to be doing for weight loss.

The best way to serve your food might be something like this:

• Being in control of the quantity you serve.
• Choosing to take any sauce on the side rather than adding it to the dish.
• Forgoing serving the dessert until you’re done eating the meal so that you can see whether there’s any space in your stomach for the sugary treat.
• Out of the available options, serve only what you need to eat, and avoid foods that might upset your gut.

Mindful Food Consumption

This is the final, and most important part of mindful eating.

Here’s how you go about consuming your food mindfully:

• Being aware of your food’s texture, aroma, and flavor.
• Savoring the taste to its full extent.
• Eating slowly.
• Avoiding overeating.
• Filling ourselves until the point of healthy satisfaction.

In consuming our food while being mindful, we make the best use of the process and enjoy every bite of food on our plates.

This means we don’t rush while eating, don’t overeat, and get off the dining table feeling full both physically and emotionally.

And I am here today to help you get to that positive state so that you can smile your way to a healthier version of yourself.

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This post is all about unique ways to practice mindful eating for weight loss.

Let’s dive in!

13 Unique Ways To Practice Mindful Eating For Weight Loss

1. Pay Attention To Your Emotions

Oftentimes, emotions might cause you to ignore your senses while eating.

This leads to over-eating, which in turn leads to weight gain.

Not only the quantity but the quality of food you select might also be overridden by your emotions.

Think about it. How many times have you gorged on chocolate, chips, or ice cream, because you’ve had a stressful day?

And how many times have you over-indulged at a party, and ended up with an upset stomach, just because you were too excited to focus on your food?

You see what I’m getting at?

In order to savor your food the right way, it’s crucial for you to dissociate your eating time from your emotions.

In doing so, you can enjoy some quiet time during your meals, away from the noise of your brain.

You also learn how to not depend on food to relieve stress (a harmful habit that often causes weight gain.)

Think you have trouble regulating your food emotions? Learn how I healed my relationship with food using 5 insanely simple tricks that work for everyone!

2. Don’t Eat When You’re Bored

If I had a penny for every time I’ve eaten out of sheer boredom, I’d be richer than Zuckerberg.

No, seriously. I still forget to not do this at times, and later regret it because I feel so full I can’t even move.

Obviously, this isn’t good for anyone, whether they’re struggling to lose weight or not.

If you’re bored, the most logical and obvious thing to do is engage in an activity.

Watch TV, read a book, go out for a walk, and play with your pet. Anything is fine, except eating.

Food should come into your day’s picture only when you’re hungry (and on some occasions, when you do want to indulge, of course. We’re not robots now, are we?)

Since we might find ourselves bored a couple of times a week, food can’t and shouldn’t be the thing that excites us.

3. Make Use Of Your Dining Table

For someone who’s trying to lose weight, eating should be a slow process, different from their other activities.

Eating in bed, or in a place where you usually work, makes it convenient for our brains to slip into old patterns.

As I said already, food can be your best friend for your fitness and should be given a special spot for this reason.

Eating at a dining table helps you connect with your food because it’d a place where eating is the only thing you do.

This way, you get to be in touch with all your senses while you eat.

And before you know it, you’d start looking forward to your lunchtime, where it’s just you and your plate, and the art of mindful eating.

Recommended: 7 Simple Ways Of Eating Healthy During The Holidays

4. No Media While You Eat

Are you someone who prefers eating while watching TV? Or maybe you keep your phone in hand, scrolling through social media posts while eating?

If yes, then I strongly advise you to drop this habit.

Mindful eating requires your full presence, and any form of entertainment media can be a hindrance to it.

I’m not saying TV is bad, or that you need to get off social media.

But while eating, food is all you need to be focusing on.

This is about giving food the space and the priority it deserves so that it can have a positive impact on our lives.

5. Tune In To Your Body’s Needs

If you’re serious about losing weight, you need to start listening to your body.

We are all born with natural and healthy eating instincts.

Our bodies are wired to cue us into what it wants to eat, and what it doesn’t.

But over time, due to some reason or other, we might end up losing this instinct to all the noise in the world.

Bad eating habits due to stress or some other factor, might lead us off the path of healthy eating.

This doesn’t mean that instinct is gone. It’s still there, waiting to be found.

While making a food-based decision, listen to your body over your mind.

Do it as many times as you can, until it takes over your mind and pulls it in on the process.

Then your mind will be the one guiding your body and helping it be fitter, instead of doing the opposite.

In other words, your mind will know how to be mindful, which is what our ultimate goal is. 🙂

A post you might be interested in: 7 Authentic Ways To Lose Belly Fat In A Week

6. Meditate For Five Minutes Before Every Meal

When we talk about any form of mindfulness, it’s hard not to talk about meditation.

The two are essentially one, in the sense that the former can be the result of the latter if done correctly.

Before every meal, get control of your breathing.

Close your eyes, and think of something that calms you down.

Ask yourself what you want to consume as food, and whether your body agrees with your mind.

Choose your body over your mind, and tell yourself you’re in control.

You don’t need to depend on food to suppress your emotions. Rather, your food will fill your sensations and guide you to satisfaction.

7. Keep A Food Journal

I wish I had started journaling sooner. It’d have saved me a lot of trouble with my feelings around food.

Ever since I started logging my food intake, I’ve realized how normal it can be for emotions to rule the human mind, and hence affect one’s food choices.

Food journaling is a great way to tune your senses in with your appetite and work your way toward eliminating triggers that cause you to go rogue with food.

If you decide to try this tip, here’s a word of caution for you:

Don’t obsess over your food entries. We’re trying to be mindful here, not start a new obsession that won’t be kind to our minds.

Highly recommended: 8 Healthy Food Habits For A Beautiful Lifestyle

8. Quit All Of Your Bad Eating Habits

Breaking bad eating patterns is a part of mindful eating.

This task isn’t something to worry about, rather it’s something that needs to be dealt with kindly and patiently.

Emotional eating, midnight snacking, over-eating, and excessive sugar intake are all examples of mindless eating habits.

You can read all about how to break free of your bad eating habits here.

Once you start eliminating these patterns, mindful eating will start coming to you naturally.

9. Exercise For At Least 30 Minutes Every Day

You know already how important exercise is for weight loss.

The 80/20 rule states that 80% of a person’s fitness comes from healthy eating habits and the rest 20% come from their activity.

But besides contributing to 20% of your weight loss, exercise can also impact the way you handle the rest of your 80% progress.

Regular exercising has a direct connection to your eating habits.

If you exercise for 30 minutes a day, you’re less likely to entertain your food cravings afterward.

After having worked hard on our bodies, it’s harder for our minds to convince us to adopt bad eating habits.

Exercise motivates you to be healthier, and while eating, you’d find yourself being more aware of what you’re eating.

10. Practice Self-Care

Have a good routine to take care of your body, both physically and mentally.

This would include having a good bath routine, a pre-bedtime skincare schedule, and healthy morning habits.

Self-care is a vast arena and can cover so much more depending on every person’s interests and what fills their soul.

Self-care brings about mindfulness, which quickly starts reflecting on other aspects of your life if you practice it regularly, including your food habits.

To master the ABCs of self-care, read my post on 7 types of self-care and learn how to master them for the best life.

11. Learn About Your Food

Knowing about your food can help you stay on your toes while eating.

Plus, it’s fun to know how much nutrition something carries, how fats can be both good and bad, and how carbohydrates function once your body processes them.

There is a ton of information on food values on the internet. One google search and you can know everything about a slice of cheesy pizza.

Learning about food brings mindfulness.

Knowing the nutritional value of your food before eating will keep you aware of how much you really need to be eating, and can also help you make healthier choices.

You might also like: 5 Amazing Drinks To Reduce Bloating And Feel Good

12. Think Before Going For A Second Serving

Many of us take two, sometimes three servings of a meal, without stopping to ask ourselves if we really need that much food.

It’s okay to go for another serving if you’re really hungry.

But I can tell you that people don’t always do this because I used to be like that.

For the longest time, my default was to eat two plates of any meal, until I realized I wasn’t taking my appetite into consideration.

This is what over-eating is, really.

Re-filling your plate after you’re done eating, because you don’t know how not to do this, or haven’t realized yet that you don’t need to.

Try eating food only till you’re 80% full (because our bellies do need some extra room to breathe.)

Any more than that, and it’ll just get stored as fat, and hence hinder your weight loss progress.

After finishing one serving of your meal, pause for 5 minutes and just sit quietly.

Your stomach needs some time to process food and tell you whether it needs more.

If you still feel like you need more to fill yourself, help yourself to another serving.

But if you don’t need more, you won’t find the food appetizing anymore, and can calmly get off the table and put the dish in the sink.

13. Be Kind To Your Mind, Body, And Soul

While chasing a fitness goal, it can be easy for us to forget the importance of self-love. Dealing with eating habits is a treacherous slope.

There might be times when you feel great after having a healthy meal, but then a bite of chocolate might make you feel bad.

This negative mindset is a bane to the practice of mindful eating.

Connecting your body with your mind to make sound food choices doesn’t mean demeaning yourself in the process.

There will be times when you over-indulge or forget to be mindful of your food. But in the long run, what matters is that you be happy while eating.

Show kindness to yourself with all your food habits.

It never does you any good to be harsh with your decisions. If you get stuck obsessing over a bad food choice, chances are you’ll unintentionally repeat that mistake.

Let your past mistakes lie in the past. Learn from them, sure, but also know how to leave them behind.

Eat kindly, and be patient if you slip a few times.

A beautiful post to inspire self-kindness: 51 Solo Date Ideas To Make You Love Yourself

Time to head to our bonus tip for this post. 😉

A Bonus Tip On Mindful Eating For Weight Loss That Can Change Your Life

Today, I am sharing with you a secret tip that can really help you get started on mindful eating.

It’s a simple technique that I discovered through a friend, and trust me when I tell you that it’s the best food advice anyone’s ever given me.

It’s helped me be mindful with my food a lot of times and hence stopped me from stuffing myself with unnecessary food on many occasions.

Okay, drumrolls and dramatic music, please!

I present you with…

THE APPLE TRICK!

When you have a sudden urge to eat something, a craving so strong that you don’t even stop to think before grabbing food, you run to the apple trick.

It’s quite simple, really.

Hold an apple in your hand. Stare at it. Get creepy if you want.

If you feel like eating it, there’s a chance you’re truly hungry and need food.

But if despite having an apple in your hand, your mind keeps shifting to the thing you were craving, you’re not hungry and are just being played with by your mind.

Doing this can help you make a sound decision on whether your gut really needs food, or you’re just slipping into eating patterns that can harm your weight loss progress.

In either case, you can go ahead and eat that apple (it has fibers that are good for your body, so nobody would tell you not to eat it.)

At least, you’d have avoided giving in to a food impulse that you’d later regret.

If you practice this trick enough times, you’ll slowly start mastering your eating urges and make your merry way to mindful eating.

Conclusion

Mindful eating can be a perfect addition to your weight loss techniques. It is the one practice that every person needs to learn in order to lead a fulfilling life.

With the help of a few tips and tricks, you can learn how to connect your mind, body, and soul together while eating and truly master the art of mindful eating.

Liked my tips on mindful eating for weight loss, or have any more to add? Leave a comment!