How To Switch To Conscious Nutrition

Focusing on sensations and giving enough time and attention to food is not a diet, but a way of life.

Awareness today is the most important achievement for everyone concerned about their own health, mental and physical. Mindfulness practice can be applied to any process involving the body and mind, including eating and digesting food . Satisfying hunger, guided by intuitive needs, is a very useful habit for improving the quality of life, and switching to conscious nutrition will help not only stabilize weight and metabolism, but also understand yourself.

What is conscious nutrition

Conscious , or intuitive , nutrition is a Buddhist skill that became popular not without the help of American biologist and medical processor John Kabat-Zinn, popularizer of meditation and mindfulness practices in various aspects of everyday life.

The main idea of ​​conscious nutrition is that the body perfectly understands whether it is hungry or not. If he is not forced, he will consume as much food as is necessary for normal work - no more and no less. The problem is that we have become accustomed to listening to it, and it takes some time to regain that ability.

Conscious nutrition does not mean that you are obliged to eat only healthy foods: in this approach, there are no such categories as harmful, useful, right, wrong. The main thing is not to chew anything automatically, not to force yourself to eat something you don't like, and not to eat emotions.

Conscious nutrition teaches you to listen to yourself and recognize when you really want to eat, and when external factors and cultural norms, stereotypes and habits, emotions and other people's opinions encourage you to do so. It is important to be able to distinguish between temptations and triggers or true hunger. For example, you went to the cinema and you know that it is customary to buy popcorn there. Everyone eats, so you should too. Or, passing by a pastry shop, you smell the aroma of fresh baked goods, and the thought appears: "Well, when I'm still in this part of the city, and everyone praises this bakery." In fact, you didn't feel like eating, because you had a good breakfast at home, but you still go in, buy a bun and a cup of coffee to go with it.

The idea of ​​mindful eating is to enjoy food while avoiding extraneous thoughts. This is how you learn to live in harmony with your body and take care of it, without waiting for something to start hurting. As psychologist and nutritionist Susan Albers writes in the book "Eating Consciously", " conscious eating involves the use of all the senses while eating ." And to understand what and when to eat, listen to internal signals - hunger and satiety, focus on the process and notice how the food looks, smells and feels in the mouth."

The motto of conscious nutrition : focus on what you eat and on the sensations that arise. Intuitive eating will help you feel the pleasure you have not noticed until now by focusing on what is happening here and now, around and within you.

Principles of conscious nutrition

The technique of conscious nutrition promotes trust in one's own body and consciousness, and the rules of an intuitive approach to food are simple and clear.

The main principle of conscious nutrition is that at the moment of food consumption, you need to focus on the food itself . Get rid of all distractions - put down your phone, turn off the TV and your favorite podcast. This is all unnecessary. If you ignore the sensations and scatter your attention, you will eat more than you need, and you will not understand how delicious the dinner was.

Try to do it slowly, focusing on the sensations. Chew your food thoroughly , recognize the taste, catch the texture, and after swallowing, try to capture the feeling of how the food enters the esophagus. A slow pace will allow you not to miss the moment of satiety - as soon as you feel full, stop eating .

Get rid of standards, diets and nutritional rules , formulated without taking into account individual needs, unnecessary comparisons and labels "good / bad food ". In this way, you will free yourself from stereotypes and learn to distinguish the body's physiological need for food from the psychological reaction to external triggers that encourage you to eat "in the mood".

This principle of conscious nutrition not only involves the choice of fresh products and the ability to understand their quality. To show respect for food means to understand its value - nutritious and for oneself personally. Such a process of food consumption is not just a satisfaction of hunger, but also a kind of ritual, which, in addition to health benefits, restores self-respect and the culture of food , forgotten in a hurry, into a habit .

Stop blaming yourself once and for all and start trusting your inner voice. Make a menu according to your preferences, remembering that you are what you eat. Do not count calories, do not measure the volume of liquid drunk, do not beat yourself up for a fresh croissant or the 4th cup of coffee. Don't go paleo or keto. Bet on a clear understanding of what is right for you. The quality of the products - first of all, among the restrictions or bans - only open garbage with excessive industrial processing. Love yourself and your food instead of fighting.