If you aren't focused on what you're eating, it can lead to an unhealthy diet, eating disorders, and gastro problems. Mindful eating is a growing trend to control cravings and understand your relationships with food and nutrition.
At its simplest, mindful eating is the practice of applying intention to your eating experience. You'll be more aware of what you are eating, and how you feel before and after you eat. And through that, you'll notice how food affects your body and mind. It's based on the same principles of mindfulness meditation.
These guides and apps will get you started on your mindful eating journey and help you progress.
1. Positive Psychology's Guide to Mindful Eating (Web): Explanation, Exercises, and Tips
Positive Psychology provides a detailed, in-depth article that introduces mindful eating for absolute beginners. It starts by defining the practice and showing how mindful eating differs from intuitive eating (a similar philosophy).
The article then dives into the science and research behind mindful eating, such as the study on The Art of Presence While You Eat. You'll learn about experiments like Kabat-Zinn's 'raisin exercise' as a form of mindfulness meditation and mindful eating. And you'll learn how to inculcate mindful eating among children too.
The article also includes excellent worksheets, handouts, app recommendations, and other resources to get you started on your mindful eating journey. If you're not sure what the practice exactly is or have any other doubts, Positive Psychology has the answer.
2. Am I Hungry? (Web): Dr. Michelle May's Mindful Eating Expert Advice
Dr. Michelle May is one of the leading voices on mindful eating and founder of the Am I Hungry program and app. She is one of the clearest educators in the space, and her YouTube channel is full of excellent videos describing what mindful eating is and how to go about the practice.
While you can pay to access the full program, the website has plenty of free materials. For example, the Eating Cycle Assessment is a short quiz of 45 multiple-choice questions to understand why you eat, when you eat, what you eat, how you eat, how much you eat, and where you invest your energy. These are crucial questions to answer in your mindful eating journey, and this quiz makes it relatively easy to figure it out.
You can also sign up with your email to get a four-chapter introduction to Dr. May's essential philosophies of mindful eating. It's an excellent introduction to recognizing your patterns. You'll also get a free ebook guide on what to do instead of eating when your body doesn't need it.
The information from the website is also available as a paid app, Am I Hungry? In our opinion, the app isn't worth it as it's pretty much repeating most of the free ideas.
3. The Center for Mindful Eating (Web): Best Guided Audio Meditations for Mindful Eating
The Center for Mindful Eating (TCME) is a non-profit dedicated to teaching people how to apply mindfulness practices to their relationships with food and eating. It has various resources for beginners as well as professionals.
Among the free resources at TCME, you'll find a list of several guided audio meditations. Topics include a taste of mindfulness, meditation on forgiveness, eating a mindful meal or snack, mindfulness of thoughts, choiceless awareness meditation, body loving kindness meditation, meditation on gratitude, mindfully eating raisins, and mindful exploration of hunger. All of these can be streamed online for free or downloaded through SoundCloud.
There are a few additional free recordings worth exploring, which aren't as easy to find. For example, you'll find guidelines on the basics of mindful eating by Lynn Rossy, Ph.D., as well as a talk on how to slip into the present moment. Further, check out their recorded teleconferences to learn how to tackle mindful eating at work or in social dining, both of which are topics not many other places touch.
4. Eating Mindfully (Web): 5 Steps to Mindful Eating and Free Trackers and Tips
Dr. Susan Albers has written extensively on mindful eating and other ways to tackle our relationship with food. The website Eating Mindfully offers free resources like a mindful eating tracker, which recommends best habits and lets you track them for a month.
She has also made the mindful eating pledge, which you can sign up for free to get a seven-day mindful eating video program. Each day, you'll get a one-minute video, a mindful eating challenge, and a free printout to guide you with it. The pledge outlines five steps to adhere to whenever you are eating.
- Eat mindfully: I will be more aware of each bite.
- Pace, not race: I will eat slowly and with intention.
- When I eat, just eat: I will eat without distraction.
- Calm without calories: I will find true comfort and soothing without food.
- Eat less, nourish more: I will eat foods that nurture my body.
Dr. Albers is also the author of EatQ, which lists several exercises to help you control cravings and impulses, which is paramount to eating mindfully. Two of those exercises are available for free, teaching you how to create a new
5. Mindful Eating Coach 2 (Android, iOS): Guided Mindful Eating App and Food Tracker
Mindful Eating Coach 2 is a free app to guide you through all the steps of mindful eating. The first part includes a series of lessons on mindful eating from Emory University's Healthy Eating and Weight Support lab. The second part is a food diary app to track what you eat and how you feel because of it.
Open up the app and tap the Before You Eat button whenever you are about to eat. Mindful Eating Coach 2 will take you through a series of exercises and questions that gear your brain to eat mindfully rather than just reactively eating. It also asks you to predict your feelings and goals after the meal.
Once you finish eating, tap the After You Eat button to note what you ate, how hungry you were and how full you are now, how mindful you were, what you noticed, and a mood tracker. You can review all your data in the day's dashboard or through the app's different charts for statistics. Plus, Mindful Eating Coach 2 can export all your data in a simple CSV file for free.
Download: Mindful Eating Coach 2 for Android | iOS (Free)
Remember, Eating is Only One Part of a Healthy Lifestyle
These mindful eating apps and guides will help you build a better relationship with food and learn the patterns of how and why you eat. But remember, eating is just one part of leading a healthy lifestyle. For more wholesome health, you also need to focus on diet and exercise, getting enough sleep, and mental health.