Mindful eating: what it is, exercises to get started and what the science says

Mindful eating has been sold as an effortless way to lose weight or as a whole philosophy of life. It is something simpler and more useful: eating while paying attention, a skill you train with concrete exercises. Here you will find what it is and what it is not, what the studies show (and what they do not), a hunger and fullness scale, six exercises and a two-week plan.

What mindful eating is (and what it is not)

Mindful eating applies the practice of mindfulness to food: attention to the present moment, without judgement. At the table it comes down to three things: noticing how hungry you are before you start, noticing flavour, texture and pace while you eat, and recognising when you are satisfied so you can decide whether to keep going or stop. There are structured programmes that teach it, such as MB-EAT (Mindfulness-Based Eating Awareness Training) developed by psychologist Jean Kristeller, but the basics fit into any meal. What it is not:

• It is not a diet: there are no forbidden foods, fixed menus or calorie targets.
• It is not eating slowly by obligation or chewing a set number of times: pace is a tool, not a rule.
• It is not a technique for eating less at any cost: sometimes paying attention will tell you that you are hungrier than you thought.
• It is not a treatment for eating disorders.
• It is not the same as intuitive eating, which is a different approach with fewer studies behind it.

Eating slowly and without distractions: the best-proven part

The two pieces with the most evidence are the least glamorous ones: pace and attention. Eric Robinson and his team pooled, in two meta-analyses in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the experiments that change one or the other and measure how much people eat. Most are lab studies of a single meal: they tell you what happens on today’s plate, not how much weight you lose in a year. Two interesting details: in the 2014 analysis, eating slowly did not change hunger either at the end of the meal or up to 3.5 hours later, so people ate less without ending up hungrier. In the 2013 analysis, trying to “focus more” on the food did not reduce intake at that meal; what made the difference was removing distractions and remembering afterwards what had been eaten.

Mindfulness, binge eating and weight: a real but modest effect

In programmes lasting several weeks, the evidence is reasonable for how people eat and weak for the scale:

• Binge eating and emotional eating: a systematic review of 14 studies (Katterman and colleagues, 2014) concluded that mindfulness meditation reduces binge eating and emotional eating in people who experience them; its effect on weight was mixed.
• Eating behaviour: Warren’s review (2017) found that mindfulness approaches work better against binge eating, emotional eating and eating in response to external cues than for losing weight.
• Weight in people with overweight or obesity: a meta-analysis of 15 studies with 560 participants (Rogers and colleagues, 2017) found an average weight loss of 4.2 kg among those who followed these programmes, with a small effect on BMI and a large effect on eating behaviour.
• Another meta-analysis of 19 studies and 1,160 people (Carrière and colleagues, 2018) estimated about 3.1 kg less at the end of the programme and about 3.4 kg at follow-up, but by comparing each group with itself before and after, not against a control group.
• The trial that best isolates the effect (Daubenmier and colleagues, 2016) randomly assigned 194 adults with obesity to a 5.5-month diet and exercise programme, with or without mindfulness training. The mindfulness group lost 1.9 kg more at 12 months and 1.7 kg more at 18 months, differences that were not statistically significant.

The hunger and fullness scale, from 1 to 10

It is the most practical tool for training attention to your signals. It is not a clinical measure and there are no “correct” numbers: its job is to make you ask the question. Rate yourself before you start, halfway through the plate and when you finish. Over time you will spot patterns, such as arriving at dinner at a 2 or ending at an 8 when you eat out.

Six exercises to get started

You do not need to do all of them, or at every meal. Pick one meal a day, the same one at first, and add exercises gradually.

• The mindful first bite. Rate your hunger, take the first bite and focus only on it: temperature, texture, flavour and how it changes as you chew. The rest of the meal can be normal.
• Eating more slowly without counting chews. Put your cutlery down between bites, take smaller bites or sip water now and then.
• Eating without screens. Turn off the TV and leave your phone in another room or face down. This one has the strongest support: eating while distracted increases what you eat now and at the next meal.
• The halfway pause. When you are halfway through, stop for a minute: put your cutlery down, breathe and rate yourself on the scale again. If you are at a 6-7, you can save the rest; if you are still hungry, carry on calmly.
• Remembering what you ate. When you finish, run through in your head what you ate and how you felt. In experiments, strengthening the memory of a meal reduced how much people ate later.
• The question before snacking. When you fancy something between meals, ask yourself where you are on the scale and what you are feeling (boredom, tiredness, stress). It is not about banning the treat, but about choosing it.

A two-week plan

A simple progression; if a week is chaotic, repeat it. Planning the week’s meals helps you sit down to eat instead of grazing on the go; if you want to organise them, use the weekly meal plan template.

Physical hunger and emotional hunger

Paying attention also helps you notice when the urge to eat does not come from your stomach. Eating for pleasure or for comfort now and then is normal; the problem starts when it becomes the automatic response to almost any emotion. In the article on emotional hunger vs. real hunger you will find concrete strategies; here are some rough clues for telling them apart:

• Physical hunger usually builds gradually, and almost any food satisfies it.
• Emotional hunger usually arrives suddenly, asks for something specific (sweet, salty, crunchy) and shows up after an emotion: stress, boredom, sadness or tiredness.
• After eating out of physical hunger you feel satisfied; after eating on autopilot because of an emotion, you often feel guilty or as if you did not really enjoy it.

Can you count calories and eat mindfully?

Yes. Counting calories gives you a reference for quantity; mindful eating gives you information about your hunger, your fullness and the context. The risk of logging is treating every number as a verdict; the risk of logging nothing is that your “I eat pretty well” does not match what you actually eat. Log without labelling foods “good” or “bad” and, if it helps, add your number on the scale. Since remembering what you ate seems to reduce how much you eat later, a quick log might help, although this has not been tested with apps specifically. If you do not want logging to steal attention at the table, Renzy estimates calories and macros from a photo of your plate, and you can correct the estimate; it also reads barcodes. And if you notice that counting makes you anxious, drop it: mindful eating does not need it.

When to seek professional help

This is general information and cannot be used to diagnose anything. Mindful eating can help with everyday emotional eating, but it is not a substitute for the treatment of an eating disorder. Talk to your GP or to a psychologist who specialises in eating disorders if any of these situations sound familiar:

• Frequent episodes in which you eat a large amount in a short time and feel you cannot stop.
• Intense guilt, shame or distress after eating, or eating in secret.
• Skipping meals, restricting heavily, vomiting, using laxatives or exercising to “make up for” what you ate.
• Food, weight or body shape take up your thoughts for much of the day and affect your life.

Mindful eating is not a diet or a weight-loss trick: it is taking your eating off autopilot. The best-proven parts are the simplest ones, eating more slowly and without screens, and the effect on weight is modest. Start with one meal a day, use the hunger scale and the halfway pause, and if food is causing you a lot of distress, ask for professional help.