Mindful and Clean Eating to Lose Weight Naturally

What is mindful eating you ask? 

Mindful eating has been gaining a lot of attention within the health and wellness community in recent times. 

Simply put, mindful eating is being present when you are consuming food, so you are experiencing, and ultimately, you are enjoying the process of eating as a whole.

This means you are perceiving the way your food smells, looks, tastes and how it makes you feel after you eat it. 

It is avoiding the opposite which is mindless eating, whereby you are not focused on the process of eating but are distracted by something else such as watching TV, talking or daydreaming. 

Limiting these types of distractions is critical in being present, to allow mindful eating and it can also play a big role in the quantity and quality of the foods that you are consuming. 

If you find yourself in a mindless state during meals, you are more likely to choose unhealthy choices and to overeat, not being aware of perhaps some physical signs of fullness or sluggishness. 

Mindful eating can really help you focus on the process of eating food for nourishment, and can help you adopt a positive relationship around food, bringing the negative cycle of craving and bingeing, which can make weight management very difficult for a lot of people. 

What is Clean Eating?

Clean eating is simply eating foods throughout the day which are devoid of anything that is detrimental to your health or unnatural such as processed foods filled with preservatives, artificial flavors, artificial colors or artificial sweeteners. 

It is about eating food in its natural states, with limited interfering by man. It is also about limiting the amount of sugar, processed salt or trans-fats that you are consuming that can also cause many health issues. 

Clean eating is a lifestyle which can make a dramatic difference to your health and weight loss goals. 

Modern culture has shifted away from clean eating in recent decades. Now there is a push to return to this natural state of eating.

Here are a few tips that I have documented to help you become a more mindful, cleaner eater to help you lose or control weight naturally. 

1)    Drink a glass of water before eating

Drinking a glass of water before meals can awaken your senses. It may seem a little bit far-fetched but the simple act of drinking water, can stimulate your focus and bring you into the present so you can fully focus on the acting of eating, which is about to take place. 

It can also hydrate and fill you up a little bit so you are less likely to overindulge with food.  

Adding a squeeze of lemon can help fire up your metabolism too, along with adding some beneficial vitamins and minerals into your water.  

2)    Sit Down at the Dining Table to Eat

I can’t tell you how many people, families even that either sit around the television or sometimes not even make it out of the kitchen when eating a meal. But I imagine it’s a lot!

It is important to slow down at mealtime, and as mentioned earlier, to eliminate any distractions such as TV, Telephones and anything else that can wait at meal time. 

Sitting down for a meal, forcing you to focus on only eating. 

Now I know you are probably asking yourself, but what if I am eating with family or friends, am I supposed to ignore them? Well whilst anything other than eating is a distraction, it’s probably not reasonable to completely ignore people that you could be eating with, however just be mindful that you are also there to eat and your focus should not be completely removed from the specific task of eating at hand. 

3)    Chew Your Food Properly

There is a saying that goes something along the lines of “you should eat your liquids and drink your food”. This is something that I always remember when I drink a smoothie. 

The saying is to remind you, that you shouldn’t be guzzling down your drinks, particularly drinks like smoothies, which may contain a lot of food within them. It is also to remind you to chew your food properly. Remember digestion starts in the mouth, therefore in order to facilitate proper digestion, you really want to chew your food, so much so that it becomes a liquid form, optimizing your body’s ability to digest that food and maximize the absorption of all of the nutrition within the food. 

By focusing on chewing your food properly, you will slow the process of eating down, which can also prevent you from overeating. It can take approximately 15 minutes before we start to feel full after eating, this is the time it takes for food to reach the stomach and produce satiety hormones which tell us to stop eating. 

4)    Ask Yourself Are You Even Hungry?

Many people eat out of habit or boredom. So it is important to ask yourself before you start eating if you are even hungry or not. Perhaps you are just looking to food as a comfort and you will be able to pull yourself out of a classic mindless eating scenario. If you are not hungry, perhaps pour you’re a glass of water and wait until you are. 

5)    Eat Colorful Foods 

Human beings are such visual creatures. We are dominated by sight, so much that we only need to look at a plate of food, to know whether or not we will enjoy it or not. 

Because our eyes see it first, it is important to eat a lot of bright, colorful and visually pleasing foods that excite our sense of sight. 

A cross section of colors on the plate, generally co-relates to a wide variety of vitamins and minerals we need to optimize our health. 

We will develop a much stronger appreciation for the wonderful assortment of foods that we have at our disposal as well. 

Colorful fruits and vegetables also tend to be the most nutritious foods, with the less amount of calories, which are perfect for losing weight naturally.