Why It Works
Hear the buzzword of mindfulness and food in the same sentence, and you may have some misconceptions. Many people think mindful eating is a new-age fad that involves picking up a raisin, staring at the raisin, smelling the raisin – all that business, or that it’s mostly about meditation. It can be about mediation, but that’s not all. In fact, mindful eating – which also feeds into ‘intuitive’ or ‘attentive’ eating, is mostly about ditching fixed attitudes or rules surrounding food.
Mindful eating is about flexible eating and getting rid of the debilitating black-and-white mindset that many of us have towards food. A lot of people are on a pendulum, swinging from extreme to extreme. So, we’ll either be on a diet and being really “good”, or off a diet and eating in excess. Eating mindfully sits in the middle, so you have more freedom with food.
Being locked into diet plans puts you in a mental and physical state of deprivation. Eventually, you’ll rebel against it. Diet plans can also lead to a loss of intuition around food. Hence, experts champion mindful and intuitive eating as a chance to rediscover what feels simple and natural.