Yes, breakfast, lunch and dinner are necessities and, of course, you eat accordingly. But how much importance do you give to the foods and preparations you eat? How much time do you spend eating those foods? What is the nutritional value of what you are eating? Let's talk about the benefits of Mindful Eating! 

In our daily lives we find ourselves on a kind of autopilot, the tasks of the day are completed without much thought: getting up, getting cleaned, coffee, breakfast, going to work, lunch, work, coming back from work, thinking about work and trying to sleep. How many of these tasks do we do consciously?  

A simple exercise: what did you eat today? Were you hungry when you ate or was it just time to eat? While you were eating, what else were you doing? 

It is very common that we do not remember what we had for breakfast in the morning and, surely, if we talk about lunch you will also remember the email you were answering or the work conversation with a colleague solving pending tasks while you were doing it. We are doing it the wrong way! 

El Mindful eating “It is a philosophy that invites us to focus our attention moment by moment on areas related to food, that is, it means raising our consciousness by observing our eating patterns with curiosity and acceptance, being aware of how we make decisions about what foods to eat, how and when.”, says Javier García Campayo, coordinator of the Mindfulness Master's Degree at the University of Zaragoza. 

We often eat unconsciously, because we have to. Mindful eating suggests that we change our mindset: Be aware! Do it when we are really hungry, when the body is demanding it. Eat what we need, until we are satisfied. And most importantly, take the time to do it, without distractions, without answering email, or checking social media, or attending a meeting. The time to consume our food should be exclusive for that activity. 

“The great change that occurs in us comes when the individual is able to consider whether he or she is physically hungry or just emotionally hungry. Differentiating between these two concepts is essential to changing the way we relate to food and, therefore, to learning to eat consciously.”, explains the Spanish woman Pilar Casanova, trainer in Mindful eating. 

These are some of the benefits of practicing mindful eating: 

• Helps differentiate emotional hunger from physiological hunger: It is common to use food as a placebo for our emotional states, for sadness, for joy, for anxiety, etc. We should eat out of hunger, when we really need it to help the body with its function. 
• Our weight will be stable: If we eat consciously and with the amount of food we need, our body weight will be appropriate and this will necessarily be reflected in our health.  
• Helps concentration: This training will help us focus on an activity, in this case, eating. It is a daily exercise that will help us have better concentration on the tasks we are doing. 
• It helps us with stress and anxiety: This task requires us, on a daily basis, to perform an emotional exercise that impacts those states of stress and anxiety that come with the days, with all their activities, work, social and family. 

5 steps to put into practice Mindful Eating:

1. Eat sitting down. Concentrate! 
2. After each bite, leave the cutlery on the table.
3. Don't force yourself to eat everything
4. No distractions: no cell phone, no TV, etc.
5. Observe what you are going to eat before you do it: the smell, the texture, the color. Be thankful. 

Don't let the hectic pace of our days dictate what you should eat. It's your choice! 

Bibliographic sources:

• Javier Garcia Campayo.
• Pilar Casanova.