Is your mindful eating practice really helping you?
Mindful eating is the practice of slowing down and becoming more conscious of what, how, and when we are eating. Some examples of mindful eating practices include:
becoming more aware of the automatic behaviours we have related to food and eating;
eating more slowly;
paying more attention to our food while we are eating;
and paying attention to and differentiating between true hunger signs and other reasons for eating.
While there are many beneficial reasons for adding more mindfulness practices to your eating routine, I have seen this approach back fire on numerous occasions in my clinical practice. Generally, I see mindful eating practices being used as standard with which to judge ourselves in a negative way, leading to guilt and shame.
Attaching our self-worth to our ability to do such things is futile, and in my opinion worse than ditching mindful eating all together. When I work with women, I almost never prescribe this as an approach because I know what type of self-judgement is likely to follow.
Mindful eating practices can be a positive for some, however, without a good relationship to food, it rarely is. If you are not at the right phase in your relationship with food, then mindful eating may be doing more harm than good for you.
Some common signs/situations that mindful eating practices are not right for you at this time, may include:
feeling shameful about your pace of eating or your food choices
using mindful eating principles in self-loathing
if you are struggling with overeating, emotional eating, and/or binge eating (as well as other eating disorders)
if you feel as if most of the principles are unattainable for you and your current lifestyle
if you feel extremely deprived when using the principles
when implementing mindful eating practices, they negatively affect your overall food intake, whether you are unable to eat enough, or you end up eating too much
If any of these situations sounds like you, mindful eating practices may not be right for you at this time, and that’s ok. There are many other approaches that could work better for you. Any practice that has you criticizing yourself more, is not a helpful practice. Part with it, and honour what you need.