Eating is a pleasurable experience to satisfy hunger. However, in a fast-paced world, and diet-obsessed culture, busy working adults, executives, entrepreneurs, and small business owners, do not engage in Mindful Eating. The consequences include weight gain and a love-hate relationship with food.

What is Mindful Eating?

Mindful Eating or intuitive eating is an ancient mindfulness practice with its roots from the Buddhist teachings. Its main concept is to reconnect us deeply with our eating experience, which is naturally healthy and enjoyable. According to Zen teacher Dr. Jan Chozen Bays, Mindful Eating is ‘the opposite of diets’ or ‘anti-diet’. In mindful eating, there is no right or wrong way to eat, but rather, a varying degree of mindfulness about why we are eating, and what we are eating. It is not about dieting or giving up on foods, but intensely experiencing food and simply enjoying the eating experience.

Mindful Eating is to develop an eating habit with intention and attention.

• Eating intentionally with the thought that you care about yourself.
• Eating with pleasure and full attention on how the food affects your body while you savour the taste of the food.
  
  

Top Benefits of Mindful Eating

Following are the benefits of mindful eating that encompass the whole eating process.

• Awareness of physical and emotional cues
• Eating for optimum health satisfaction
• Meeting other needs more effectively other than eating
• Empowerment and exercising the power of choice by food selection for both nourishment and enjoyment
• Recognition of non-hunger triggers for eating
• Recognition of how to use the energy you consumed to live a fully charged life
  
  

Other Positive Outcomes of Mindful Eating

• Better management of habitual issues such as bulimia and anorexia nervosa and relieve anxiety about the food you eat and your body
• Improvement of symptoms of Type 2 Diabetes
• Reduced weight, and reduced Body Mass Index (BMI)
• Reduce habitual overeating and binge eating
  
  

The 4 Mindful Eating Techniques

The following questions by Dr. Susan Albers will help you check each dimension of Mindful Eating. You can download the Mindful Eating Checklist here or simply ask yourself these questions when you eat:

• Mind: Am I fully tasting my food with every bite or am I unmindful when I eat?
• Body: How does my body feel before and after I eat? Do I feel low energy, full or empty?
• Feeling: What do I feel about the food that I eat? Do I feel guilt, pleasure, joy, regret or disappointment?
• Thoughts: What thoughts does this food bring to my mind? Does it bring good memories, fears, myths or beliefs?
  
  

Mindful Eating to Supercharge Your Work

When you are mindful and in full attention to the experience of eating, you reconnect with your natural signals. Because of this, you manage to eat at work without excessive diet restrictions or obsessions about every bite of food you put in your mouth. Mindful Eating has been proven to have positive impacts to both physical and mental well-being.

Mindful Eating is the antidote to routine and habitual patterns like overeating. This benefit can cause other positive outcomes that influence everything from weight loss, emotional eating, or exaggerated diet restriction. It can also have positive effects in the workplace because when we have a positive and confident outlook on ourselves, we tend to perform in the same manner at work. Mindful Eating will also allow you to concentrate on what is important in your day, rather than obsessing over what you eat or have eaten.

Therefore, Mindful Eating results to improved relationship with food and a will supercharge your work performance.

If you need extra help, ExecFuel is specially designed to help busy professionals address issues that cause stress eating, and empowers you with powerful techniques to overcome these obstacles. You also receive abundant resources such as infographics, downloadables, and videos to keep you on the right track to a healthier mental and physical lifestyle.

Get started immediately, take back control, and give yourself the freedom you deserve.