Mindful vs. Mindless Eating: What’s the difference?

Have you ever watched TV with a family-size bag of chips that was half full one minute and empty the next, leaving you wondering how they disappeared so quickly? How about grabbing a piece of candy every time you walk past the candy jar at work? 

Learning how to eat mindfully will help you to reduce/eliminate these mindless eating habits so you can take control of your food choices.  

What is Mindful Eating?

Mindful eating is a way of eating that helps you pay attention to the food you’re consuming and how it makes you feel. It’s an opportunity to practice self-care by being present in the moment and enjoying your food rather than over-indulging and not feeling your best. The key to mindful eating is listening to the signals your body sends about taste, satisfaction, and fullness. 

Fundamentally, mindful eating involves: 

• Eating slowly and without distraction
• Listening to physical hunger cues and eating until you’re satisfied
• Distinguishing between true hunger and non-hunger triggers for eating
• Engaging your senses by noticing colors, smells, sounds, textures, and flavors
• Learning to cope with guilt and anxiety about food
• Eating foods that are both pleasing and nourishing
• Appreciating your food 

Mindless Eating: The Other Side of the Coin

A mindless eater eats without paying attention to what they’re doing or why they’re doing it. They don’t question their choices or consider how their choices make them feel either immediately after eating or later on down the road. When we eat mindlessly, we tend to eat more than what our body really needs because we are distracted by other things and don’t pay attention to our hunger cues.

Mindless eating looks like this: 

• Rushing through meals
• Eating while distracted
• Alternating between starving and uncomfortably full 
• Labeling food as “good” or “bad” and restricting choices
• Eating food just because it’s there

So what can you do to be a mindful eater? Here are some tips to practice:

1. Eat without distractions.  Turn off the TV/cellphone/computer while eating, and just focus on what’s happening in front of you— your food! You’ll notice flavors, enjoy your meal more and feel fuller faster when there aren’t any distractions around.
2. Chew thoroughly and eat slowly. Did you know that It takes approximately 20 minutes from the time you start eating for your brain to send out signals of fullness? This is why eating slowly is so important! 
3. Pay attention to your hunger & fullness cues. Take pauses and check in with yourself while you’re eating to see how full you are, and honor when you reach that point.
4. Eat consistently. Going too long without eating will cause you to become ravenous, which may lead to the quickest and easiest food choice, not always a healthful one. It will also cause you to eat faster than usual because you’re probably starving. Avoid this by eating consistently, every 3-4 hours and don’t skip meals. 
5. Engage all senses. Eating is much more than just tasting; it’s also about feeling textures, smelling aromas, looking at colors and shapes of foods, hearing crunchy foods or sizzling sounds—and listening to others’ conversations while enjoying their company at dinner parties or family gatherings!  Pause periodically to engage these senses. 

What does the research say? 

The severity and frequency of binge eating episodes may be significantly reduced by mindful eating.1 According to one study, obese women who participated in a 6-week group intervention experienced a reduction in binge eating episodes from 4 to 1.5 times per week.2 The severity of each episode decreased as well.2

Mindful eating methods have also been shown to reduce emotional eating and external eating (in response to environmental, food-related cues, such as the sight or smell of food) as well.3 

The overwhelming majority of studies concur that mindful eating aids in weight loss by changing eating habits and lowering stress.4 Additionally, participants in a 6-month seminar on mindful eating lost an average of 26 pounds without any weight regain in the following three months.5

For those new to mindful eating, it may be helpful to choose one or two tips above to practice per week. It’s unrealistic to expect to eat mindfully at every single meal, but the more you intentionally make time to eat mindfully, the more natural it will become.

References: 

1. Katterman, S. N., Kleinman, B. M., Hood, M. M., Nackers, L. M., & Corsica, J. A. (2014). Mindfulness meditation as an intervention for binge eating, emotional eating, and weight loss: a systematic review. Eating Behaviors, 15(2), 197–204.
2. Kristeller, J. L., & Hallett, C. B. (1999). An exploratory study of a meditation-based intervention for Binge Eating Disorder. Journal of Health Psychology, 4(3), 357–363.
3. O’Reilly, G. A., Cook, L., Spruijt-Metz, D., & Black, D. S. (2014). Mindfulness-based interventions for obesity-related eating behaviours: a literature review: Mindfulness interventions for eating behaviours. Obesity Reviews: An Official Journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity, 15(6), 453–461.
4. Daubenmier, J., Kristeller, J., Hecht, F. M., Maninger, N., Kuwata, M., Jhaveri, K., Lustig, R. H., Kemeny, M., Karan, L., & Epel, E. (2011). Mindfulness intervention for stress eating to reduce cortisol and abdominal fat among overweight and obese women: An exploratory randomized controlled study. Journal of Obesity, 2011, 651936.
5. Niemeier, H. M., Leahey, T., Palm Reed, K., Brown, R. A., & Wing, R. R. (2012). An acceptance-based behavioral intervention for weight loss: a pilot study. Behavior Therapy, 43(2), 427–435.