5-day Mindful Eating challenge

Samantha Nicole
Jun 18, 2020
6 min read

Intuitive eating often helps our body learn when to eat when hungry and when to stop when full. Many people have an unhealthy relationship with food that causes them to overeat passed the point of being uncomfortable. Having a negative mindset towards food may be a result of underlying causes leading to emotional eating that could be from stress, sleep deprivation, and anxiety.

So much positive media has directed the finger towards mindful eating and the great benefits that come from it. Eating helps to integrate the messages from the body with thoughts and behaviors that ultimately puts us in charge of our body and its health. Thinking about our relationship with food may seem harmless and mundane, but I encourage you to ask yourself these questions:

Do you have “cheat” days?
Do you sometimes feel guilty after eating?
Do you have foods that are off-limits?
Do you overeat without realizing?
Do you use food as a reward?

If you have said yes to any of these questions, then you may not have the best relationship with food as you may have thought. The thought of a cheat day is not exactly something positive and feeling guilty about eating does not promote a positive mindset. A relationship with food does not have to be that way.

"I'm working on myself, for myself, by myself"

Instead of living on autopilot, remember to take things slow. Mindfulness is not a simple quality to practice, but the consistency is reputable. Identifying how think around the foods we crave all comes down to what we are feeling when the trigger starts. Are we hungry or just bored – known as emotional eating. By ignoring those triggers, we accept being a slave to our food and slave to our emotions. I have found that keeping a food journal (this awesome nutrition sidekick) promises sustainable accountability and weight-loss!

Mindful eating exercises are proving their effectiveness by proving them to be tangible, measurable, happier lifestyle, and a way to live healthier. We often inherit our food beliefs from those in our environment and the most influential relationships we have in life. Changing a food mindset is not going to be easy, but it will be worth it to learn how that mindset developed in the first place. Regular practice of this exercise will support a positive mindset shift even while grocery shopping.

Start to change your relationship with food by getting familiar with this 5-day Mindful Eating Challenge. The ingredients to living a mindful and intuitive life are going to spill over into other areas of your life. Whether it is in the area of relationships, career, physical activity, nutrition & health, or self-awareness the positive things in life will start to flourish. Check out these simple tips to include mindfulness into daily routines by trying this 5-day challenge.

Day 1: Eliminate Distractions

Creating an environment that promotes mindful eating means to eliminate all distractions. There are so many screens to look at like TV, tablets, phones, and laptops. In the busy world that we live in sometimes sitting down and putting the present moment first can be difficult. It is almost the normal thing to work while on break such as computer work or finishing a project.

Mindless eating is a huge cause of these distractions. It is so simple to scroll through our social media and catch up on YouTube while the clock ticks away. The first part of the challenge is to eat without any distractions – that may mean taking a lunch break while sitting at the kitchen table with nothing around you. This means that turning the TV off and leaving that cell phone on the counter could help.

*This is one of the first steps to being mindful.

Day 2: Slow down and really taste the chocolate

Food choices are often determined by the pace we set for ourselves. Slow down whatever is going on while eating. By doing this our body can really savor every bite and enjoy the meal to its fullest. This also gives the body time to send that “full” signal to your brain so that overeating and that uncomfortable does not occur.

The idea is to slow down the time it takes to fully complete each meal. When I eat, I mentally set a time that I want it to take me to eat my meal. I agree to that time period and use that as my foundation to slow down my chewing. I love to enjoy my meal and do not want to scarf it down just to wish I had more. The taste of every bite, the smell, the texture, the contents of what go into every piece. Eating slower may help with faster weight-loss and less digestive discomfort.

For every meal there are two options that you can choose from during day-2 of your challenge:

Option 1: Chew every bite between 15-20 times
Option 2: Take a 1-minute break every 5-minutes of your meal.

Day 3: Mystery or in the Present

Eating is very much tied to how we express emotions meaning that some food choices may be linked to other things going on. When mindfulness is practiced during mealtime, alternative food options are more likely to be food for thought. The natural appetite can do wonders to remove mind chatter that can oftentimes disrupt communication with that authentic hunger.

There is no judgment for how we feel and especially not when it comes to food. Intuitive eating is all about knowing why you are eating, not how much. Continue to check in throughout the day with your mental self and realize those emotions – are they different, are you satisfied, do you feel better or worse after?

For the day 3 challenge practice being aware of those hunger pains and what they are saying and the emotion that follows. Understanding them can be the key to choosing healthier alternatives.

Day 4: Mindset over Eating

Knowing when enough is enough comes from unconsciously hearing that powerful signal that tells the brain not to eat any more. Much of overeating is often due to subconscious anxiety over scarcity. To be in the present moment and eat without distraction it is important to understand the pattern behind hunger and eating. When we focus on calming our natural urges, the natural body recomposition starts to happen in an effortless way.

That is when we know to stop obsessing about weight-loss diets and start refocusing on the natural rhythm that balances the body out. Mindfulness in eating can sometimes be hard to pinpoint as the desire to be mindful increases the hunger desire will shift in turn. Meditation exercises may help with creating a more intuitive approach to being aware during mealtime.

For day 4 of the challenge, the goal is to listen to a mindful eating meditation on YouTube or another online site. Sitting down and listening to this guide may be supportive in creating awareness to making healthy choices. Who knows, you may find that this brings balance to other areas of your life, like your sleep habits or relationships 😊

Day 5: Rehabilitate Your Nature and Know Your Stomach

It is important to have a good understand of the stomach and to know what feels good and what is discomforting. Some of us have learned to ignore that fullness to the point of being uncomfortable. The hormones in the brain are released when it is hunger and are suppressed when full.

After long enough the body is trained to ignore this feeling. Fullness cues are a natural way to regulate how much we eat in one sitting. Many of us rarely think about this when we are not eating or are full. Mindfulness means to bring awareness to your meals which will do wonders to remove any dull emotions that may be disrupting that communication. A subconscious feeling of scarcity may cause someone to ignore that full feeling.

Before grabbing that bite of food, rate your hunger level on a scale of 1 to 10:

1 = starving
5 = satisfied (neither hungry nor full)
10 = stuffed to the point of feeling sick

Half-way through your meal, rate your level again, and once more when you have finished eating.

" We eat to live, not the other way around”

Living a healthy lifestyle has many different points to touch on and one of them is mindfulness. As incredible as the world is, we live in a much different world today than our ancestors did. There is so much information available to us at our fingertips. It may seem too overwhelming at times, while others it is a touch of freedom. Using mindful eating can be like pressing a force-quit on digital overload as well as many other stressors. We set ourselves up to reap the benefits of meditation regardless of changing circumstances.

Focus on growth rather than perfection.

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