Why Mindful Eating is Not Just a Fad

As people age, unwanted weight can creep up to uncomfortable levels. Mindful eating is one way to combat this weight gain. Modifying one’s behavior when it comes to food is an effective way to improve health and wellness without resorting to restrictive and difficult diets. Unlike fad diets, mindful eating consists of behavioral changes that help one optimize health, wellness, and nutrition.

Today’s sedentary and isolated environments are not always conducive to self-improvement and behavior modification, but there are tools available. Programs, support groups, and even apps like GoEatRightNow can help make mindful eating a much easier process. There’s no time like the present to explore mindful eating and the many ways it can improve health, fitness, and one’s overall well-being. The concept of mindful eating can even be applied to other areas of your life. Mindfulness in general can help you feel grounded and put things into perspective when you start to feel overwhelmed.

Let’s explore mindful eating a little further.

What is mindful eating?

It can be something as simple as stopping eating every night at 7 pm or adding more clean foods to one’s diet. Paying attention to food consumption must focus on both the quantity and quality of the food one is eating. Using an app to track food choices and intake is effective in helping to reduce instances of binge and stress eating for people of all ages and fitness levels.

By making conscious food choices, reactionary eating can be kept at a minimum. Many times, food choices are completely automatic without much thought going into these choices. The mind has been conditioned to reach for sweet or salty snacks to satisfy a passing desire, rather than opting for nutritious and fortifying foods. By retraining the mind and the body to seek out healthier food options, the incidences of stress eating can decrease.

Make no mistake, this is not a fad, but an entirely different approach to food, eating, and wellness. Rather than restricting calories, it is a process that seeks to replace bad habits with those that are more beneficial. It’s a change in behavior that will evolve over a lifetime.

Using apps for behavior modification

Apps are a part of today’s digital life, and thankfully, there are many effective ones to help encourage mindful eating. Because personal devices are now part of everyday life, it only makes sense to utilize them for improving one’s life. Behavior modification requires the establishment of new habits and routines to replace those that can be detrimental or non-helpful. Because of the multi-sensory way in which users interact with apps, they are an effective way to build new habits and improve one’s eating habits and overall health.

Tracking calories, eating schedules, and food intake, is the foundation necessary to analyze eating habits and find areas for improvement. Using an app allows people to focus on bettering their lives, rather than beating themselves up over their shortcomings. An app is helpful for tracking and staying on purpose and provides a safe environment that is conducive to change. It can be used privately and within one’s comfort level. Many reluctant users thrive when using an app as it allows them to monitor behavior without shame or fear of judgment.

End binge-eating and feel better today

The stresses of the past year have contributed to disordered eating for many people. Even for those who have not had food issues before, working from home has caused stress eating to become a reality for many. Ending stress or binge-eating is one effective way to create a healthier lifestyle that will pay dividends. Mindful eating can help to improve one’s physical health, but it doesn’t stop there. Mental health is also boosted when binge-eating is left behind.

After binge-eating is replaced by mindful eating habits, it is possible to focus on other life improvements, such as becoming more active or being more mindful about entertainment and social media use. It can be the beginning of a lifetime of improvement as mindfulness is appropriate across the entirety of one’s life.

Food feeds the body, mind, and spirit, and is vital to survival.  But not all food is created equally. It’s time to leave behind the fad diets and adopt a behavioral habit that will improve one’s life today and tomorrow.