Have you ever consumed a box of pizza without tasting a single slice? How about finishing a full plate of rice and fish while you scroll through your phone, only to feel that your stomach is full, but you still want more? That’s a mindless mouthful, which is the complete opposite of mindful eating.
We’re all guilty of mindless mouthfuls. That is, we eat on autopilot. The reason for this is that we treat eating as a secondary task. We do it while we’re working, walking to the bus station, or consuming content online. As a result of this habit, we overeat.
Mindful eating, on the other hand, lets you savor every bite and taste the flavor. It’s not a restrictive eating diet. Rather, it’s about retraining your brain to shift from emotional consumption to intentional eating.
Mindful Eating: The Science Behind It
For many years, I’ve been looking at and reading health data. Many health experts conclude that the body reacts to stress. This is the reason I eat a lot of pizza when I’m anxious because of a tight deadline. But when I started to eat mindfully, I stopped overeating. Thus, mindful eating is not just about wellness vibes. Rather, it’s a biological intervention.
When we eat mindfully or with intention, we’re influencing three vital physiological systems:
Vagal Tone
When you slow down and breathe while you eat, you stimulate the vagus nerve. Your body transitions from fight or flight (sympathetic) to rest and digest (parasympathetic). As a result, it optimizes the production of enzymes and proper absorption of nutrients.
Cortisol Regulation
During stress-eating, your body releases more cortisol. Unfortunately, this action signals the body to store more abdominal fat. It also disrupts insulin sensitivity. Mindfulness acts as a natural buffer. It lowers the stress response during your mealtime.
Interoceptive Awareness
Your brain has the ability to hear your internal organs. When you consistently practice mindfulness, you can strengthen the neural pathways between your brain and your gut. This makes it more impossible to ignore your natural hunger and fullness.
By moving away from the restrictive diet and toward biological awareness, you’re not just changing how you eat, but you’re also optimizing how your body functions at a cellular level.
What is Mindful Eating Exactly — Defining the Intent
Mindful eating is an internal process. It does not rely on rules and calorie counts, unlike dieting. It forces you to shift your focus from the results on the scale to the experience on the plate. Because you’re more focused on the experience, you are moving away from being guilty and restricted to a sustainable, healthy relationship with each meal.
7 Core Principles of a Mindful Meal
To assist you in moving to intentional eating, you can follow these core principles. They are helpful in transforming the act of eating into an act of self-care:
Honor the Food
You must honor where the food came from. It means you have to acknowledge the farmers, the soil, and the preparation. This will help you create a connection to your food.
Engage Your Senses
Don’t just bite your food. Notice its color. Is it green? How does it smell? What’s the texture? How does it sound when you chew it?
Practice Portions
Because you’re engaging your senses, make sure to start eating with smaller servings. This will help you avoid being pressured to clean your plate. It will also help you stop eating when your body feels satisfied and not when you’re full.
Savor Each Bite
You can do this by noticing the flavors and the transition of textures as you chew thoroughly. This is also helpful because chewing your food thoroughly can help you avoid bloating, diarrhea, heartburn, and other digestive problems.
Eat Slowly
It takes 20 minutes or so for your brain to receive the signals from your gut that you’re full. By eating slowly, you’re giving your body time to catch up.
Choose Plant-Based Variety
To support your system, make sure to incorporate an array of plant-based foods. This will provide your body with a great profile of nutrients and fiber.
Don’t Skip Meals
It’s true that we’ve advocated intermittent fasting before. We also suggested eating one meal a day (OMAD). However, fasting isn’t for everyone. And if you do it incorrectly, it can lead to extreme hunger. And extreme hunger is the enemy of mindfulness. But when you eat at regular intervals, you can prevent the starvation state that always leads to impulsive choices.
However, I’m not saying that intermittent fasting is not effective. In fact, you can practice mindful eating while also following the principles of intermittent fasting. For instance, you can use your fasting window to check in with your body. Is that hunger that you feel at 9 AM when your stomach is growling? Or is it just a habit or boredom?
Fasting lets your insulin levels drop. During your fasting state, your body taps into your stored energy. Mindful eating ensures that when you break your fast, you’re not just eating out of habit.
The biggest risk with IF is when you eat at a level 1 or 2 on the hunger scale. That is, you’re starving to the point of fainting. When you’re this hungry, your prefrontal cortex shuts down. Your impulsive part takes over. And this is why it’s not good for mindful eating, as this is where mindless overeating happens. Thus, if you’re practicing IF and wish to be mindful, you must plan your breakfast meal. Make sure that it’s high in fiber and protein. Use the first bites to transition your body out of the fasted state slowly, instead of rushing the process.
In this new mindful model, you’re using your awareness. Is that real hunger? Those who can avoid eating for more than 16 hours are mindful of their body’s signals. They don’t eat unless they’re really hungry.
A New Direction for Us, Vim Ch’i
If you’ve followed us for a while, you know that we focused on Herbalife shakes and traditional dieting. But our medical background led us to a powerful realization. That is, meal replacement is not true wellness. Rather, true wellness is built through sustainable habits and awareness. Read more about our transition to help you master the art of journaling and somatic eating on our About Us page.
How Mindfulness Changes Your Brain and Body
Many people would call mindful eating a spiritual practice. As a mindful eater myself, I want to highlight the biological restrictions that happen when you commit to this habit. You’re not just changing your relationship with food. But you’re also physically changing the neural pathways of your brain.
Rewiring the Hunger Circuit or Neuroplasticity
Our brain is plastic. It does not mean that it’s made of plastic. Instead, it means that it can reorganize itself based on repeated behaviors. Studies in nueroimaging has shown that consistent mindfulness practice can strengthen the connectivity between the two vital parts of your brain.
- Hypothalamus: This is referred to as the hunger center. It regulates your metabolic signals, like when you need fuel and when you’re satiated.
- The Default Mode Network (DMN): It’s the self-reflection center of your brain.
When you’re mindlessly eating, these two parts of your brain operate separately. That’s why when you feel a hunger signal from the hypothalamus, you react impulsively without reflection. But when you start practicing mindfulness, you’re building a bridge between these two. It lets you pause when a hunger signal arrives. You get to ask yourself whether or not it’s a physical, real hunger or just a habitual stress response. This neural strengthening is what makes mindful eating feel like a natural reflex, instead of a chore.
Somatic Awareness and Interoceptive Accuracy
Okay, that’s a mouthful. But it’s the heart of this practice. Your brain’s ability to sense the internal state of your body. When you live on autopilot, you have low interoceptive accuracy. You might only notice that you’re hungry when you reach a ravenous state, or level 2, or you only notice that you’re full when you are painfully stuffed or level 9. This physical experience makes it difficult for you to manage your weight.
When you practice somatic awareness, you’re training your nervous system to pick up any subtle internal signals before you become extremely hungry.
The 3 vs 7 distinction: you start to feel the gentle stomach contraction of a level 3 or gentle hunger. You can choose a nutritious meal before your logic is overridden by hunger.
On the other hand, you learn to identify level 7 or satisfied. It’s a moment when your stomach is full, but your body feels light and energetic.
As you can see, mindful eating isn’t just about willpower. It’s also about biometric sensitivity. When you sharpen your somatic awareness’s you’re giving your body the data that it needs to regulate itself.
The Hunger-Satiety Scale
The medical world uses scales to measure everything. For instance, when you visit an emergency room, a doctor would ask you, “On the scale from 1-10, what’s your pain level?” In mindful eating, you also need a biometric scale for your sensations. It’s your hunger-satiety scale that can transform vague feelings into actionable data. You can use a 1-to-10 framework.
If you live in autopilot, your cycle can fluctuate. You wait until you are at a level 2 or starving/faint to eat (It happens to me in some cases). Unfortunately, if you wait for so long until you eat can trigger a primal survival response in the brain. Your brain will be in emergency mode. And if that happens, you won’t stop eating until you hit a level 9 or stuffed/painful. This causes digestive stress, insulin spikes, and lethargy.
What’s the Flow State of Eating
If you’ve mastered mindful eating, you can easily stay within the 4 to 7 zone. This is the range that will keep your blood sugar stable while your cognitive functions are sharp.
You should eat at a 4 level. It’s a hungry or ready level. This is where you feel a physical pull for food. However, your mind is still clear. In that case, you still have a rational decision about what to eat, instead of grabbing the first high-sugar snack that you see.
But you have to stop at a 7 scale. It is a satisfactory or comfortable level. This is the sweet spot. At a 7 level, your stomach is already full but not stretched. You’re energized, light, and capable of returning to work. You can also exercise without experiencing a food coma.
When you use this scale each day, you’re tracking food, and you’re recalibrating your nervous system to recognize your boundaries.
Want a printable version of this scale to keep on your fridge? Join our Mindful Eating Journal waitlist [link] to get the toolkit sent to your inbox.
5 Daily Exercises for Mindful Eating Beginners
If you have a mindless habit now, the change won’t happen overnight. Even though I’ve been practicing mindful eating for nearly a year now, I still experience mindless eating from time to time. As they say, consistency is the key. That’s why I highly recommend these exercises to help strengthen your interoceptive accuracy.
1. The 20-Minute “Speed Limit”
It’s said that it takes 20 minutes for cholecystokinin (CCK) to signal your brain that you’re full. To meet that target, set a timer for 20 minutes when you start eating your meal. It gives your hormones a chance to communicate with your brain.
2. The First Three Bites Sensory Scan
Before the autopilot starts, do these steps for your first three bites of each meal. That is for the first three bites, close your eyes if you can, and identify the following:
- Texture: Is it crunchy, dense, or creamy?
- Temperature: Is the food warm, cold, or room temperature?
- Flavor: Is it salty, acidic, or sweet?
This may be simple, but it moves your experience from the reward center of the brain to the sensory cortex.
3. The Reset in the Middle of the Meal
Before you consume everything on your plate, perform a “check-in” halfway through your plate. Don’t continue eating. Instead, put your fork down.
Take deep breaths. This will help stimulate your vagus nerve. It will also help you move out of sympathetic or stress mode. Then, ask yourself, where are you right now in terms of satisfaction level? If you’re already at 6 or 7, you can stop eating. Any leftovers can be stored in your fridge.
4. The Audit
Your environment, unfortunately, dictates your energy level. To help you become more mindful when you eat, remove one distraction from your eating space each day. For instance, you can remove your phone, TV, or laptop when you eat. If you’re used to eating at your work table, there’s a tendency to overeat because you’re more focused on what you’re working on than eating.
When you start eating at a table without your laptop or phone, you’ll notice the speed at which you chew. That is, you chew slowly. Your internal somatic signal becomes clearer because you remove one visual noise.
Try it out, now.
5. Reflection
This is the foundation of the habit you’re building. Before you take your first bite, write down one word that describes your current emotion. For instance, you can write, “stressed or bored.”
Then, after eating your meal, write down how your body feels. Are you energized or balanced? Writing how you feel after eating can help you determine your emotions and how they influence your satiety.
You may have a device that you wish to use to record this reflection. But nothing beats an analog journal. It’s more effective because physically writing it down engages the reticular activating system. It’s a bundle of nerves that acts as a filter for every piece of information that your brain processes. When you write by hand, it requires more motor movements than when you tap a screen. This effort signals to the system that the information is vital.
Furthermore, handwriting is slower than typing. This difficulty forces your brain to process the information more deeply. Thus, instead of mindlessly entering “burger” into a database, the second it takes to write “I felt slight tension in my chest before eating a burger” gives your brain the space it needs to realize that you’re actually not hungry. You’re just stressed.
We’re currently in the final stages of developing the mindful eating journal. Our journal is built on the medical principles of vagal tone and interoceptive accuracy.
The journal is currently in the works as part of our new mission to provide you with tangible tools for mindful living. Join our waitlist here and be the first to know when we launch and receive an exclusive early-bird discount.