You Asked: Should I Try ‘Mindful Eating?’

Grab a raisin—just one raisin—and put it on a plate. Now, sit down and examine the raisin. Smell it. Roll it between your fingers. When you feel you’ve fully appreciated its raisin-ness, pop it into your mouth, and consider its taste and texture as you slowly chew and swallow it. You’ve just dabbled in the trendy practice of mindful eating: a kind of meditation in motion that’s increasingly being scientifically studied for its potential health benefits. Like other mindfulness methods, it emphasizes a judgment-free awareness of your thoughts, emotions and sensory experiences, and it helps you pay attention to a task all of us do (several times a day) but seldom stop to notice. Some experts believe that mindful eating helps attune practitioners to many parts of the body and can therefore have benefits from the brain to the gut. Mindful eating can help connect you to your body’s built-in hunger and fullness cues—signals many of us miss when we’re distracted by TV, phones or other external stimuli, says Megrette Fletcher, a registered dietitian, co-founder of the nonprofit Center for Mindful Eating and author of five books on mindful eating. It can also help you make better food choices. “The key benefit of mindful eating is it is a sustainable approach to dietary change,” she says. Here’s how mindful eating can help improve your diet and health. Mindful eating might help you eat less One review of 24 studies, pub...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Diet/Nutrition Source Type: news