Do you practise mindful eating?
It is something I have to intentionally remind myself to do often. I am known to stand at the kitchen bench and eat the kids leftovers or scroll through my phone and scoff down food without any awareness of what I have eaten and how my body is feeling.
There are endless lists of the latest must-have superfoods & discussion about healthy eating tends to focus on what we eat.
Much less attention is paid to the question of how we eat it.
Changing our attitudes & practices around meals & mealtime rituals may be every bit as important as what we actually put in our mouths.
Eat slower!
Eating slowly doesn’t have to mean taking it to extremes. Still, it’s a good idea to remind yourself, and your family, that eating is not a race. Taking the time to savor and enjoy your food is one of the healthiest things you can do. You are more likely to notice when you are full, you’ll chew your food more and hence digest it more easily, and you’ll probably find yourself noticing flavors you might otherwise have missed. If you have young children, why not try making a game of it — who can chew their food the longest?
Silence the phone! Turn off the TV.
Our daily lives are full of distractions, and it’s not uncommon for families to eat with the TV blaring or one family member or other fiddling with their iPhone. Consider making family mealtime, which should, of course, be eaten together, an electronics-free zone.
Mindful eating does not have to be an exercise in super-human concentration, but rather a simple commitment to appreciating, respecting and, above all, enjoying the food you eat every day.
