Mindful eating
An approach to eating with full awareness, paying attention to sensations, hunger and fullness, without distraction or judgement, to regulate food intake naturally.
Mindful eating applies the principles of mindfulness to meals: slowing down, savouring, observing your sensations of hunger and fullness, and eating without screens or distraction and without moral judgement.
The original angle (finding the lost signals again): it is not a « diet » but a retraining of body signals. Modern life has blurred them:
- We eat fast (fullness signals arrive about 20 minutes late: eating fast means eating too much before you « feel » you have had enough)
- We eat distracted (screens, work): the brain does not register the meal, and we are hungry sooner afterwards
- We eat from emotion (stress, boredom) rather than real hunger
- Industrial portions and the hyper-optimised taste of ultra-processed foods short-circuit fullness
Eating mindfully helps you to tell apart again physical hunger and emotional hunger, to stop when you are full (and not at « clean plate »), and to reduce passive overeating.
Evidence: studies show that mindful eating helps reduce food compulsions (binge eating) and emotional eating, and can support weight management, often better than standard restrictive diets, because it addresses behaviour rather than imposing rules.
In practice:
- Eat without screens, seated, at a table
- Put your cutlery down between mouthfuls and chew slowly
- Ask yourself before eating: « am I hungry, or is this an emotion? »
- Stop at ~80% full (the Okinawan principle of « hara hachi bu »)
- Really savour it (colour, smell, texture, taste)
This approach ties in with the cephalic phase of digestion: eating calmly and attentively also improves digestion itself.