{"id":67549,"date":"2022-01-16T21:34:58","date_gmt":"2022-01-16T21:34:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/?p=67549"},"modified":"2022-01-16T21:34:58","modified_gmt":"2022-01-16T21:34:58","slug":"what-is-mindful-eating-benefits-how-it-works-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/what-is-mindful-eating-benefits-how-it-works-2\/","title":{"rendered":"What is mindful eating? Benefits & how it works (2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Read the first part<\/a> of the article<\/p>\n

Emotional & mindless eating<\/strong><\/p>\n

The flip side of mindful eating is mindless eating. When you aren\u2019t bringing consciousness or attention to your relationship with food, you\u2019re more likely to eat on autopilot. And in a toxic food culture, that usually leads to some pretty unhealthy choices.<\/p>\n

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Mindless eating often opens the door wide to its close relative, emotional eating, which involves using food to fill emotional needs, rather than nutritional ones. While all of us use food to make ourselves feel better on occasion, when emotional eating becomes the default (and often only) way we can tend to our feelings, we lose the ability to recognize and address genuine psychological needs.<\/p>\n

Stress eating is a good example. Unless the sole cause of your stress is physical hunger, eating will not resolve the stress. Worry, upset, anger, loneliness, exhaustion, and boredom can feel intolerable. And most of us learn quite early in life that ice cream and cookies and fries can distract us from those feelings, at least for a short while. If that becomes your go-to strategy, however, you\u2019ll almost certainly overeat. Because you\u2019ll need to keep stimulating your taste buds to override the unwanted emotional state \u2013 regardless of whether you\u2019re hungry or not.<\/p>\n

Emotional eating not only leads you to make poor food choices, and overeat on those choices, it also prevents you from recognizing and tending to your true needs. And ironically, it may actually make the problems worse. If you\u2019ve ever eaten for emotional reasons, felt remorse for what and how much you ate, and then started beating yourself up for messing up and not having more willpower, you\u2019re familiar with that vicious cycle. The more you overeat, the worse you feel. The worse you feel, the stronger the urge to self-medicate with more junk food. Eventually, this can even spiral into anxiety and depression.<\/p>\n

Strategies to move away from mindless eating<\/strong><\/p>\n

Is there a way out from the grip of mindless, emotional eating? The answer, fortunately, is yes. One way is to proactively identify other strategies to transform your mood and your state \u2013 and commit to practicing them.<\/p>\n

Here are a few examples:
\n\u2022 If you\u2019re depressed or lonely, call someone who often makes you feel better, play with your dog or cat, or look at a favorite photo or cherished memento.<\/p>\n