Mindful eating is based on mindfulness, which is a Buddhist concept. Mindfulness is a form of meditation that helps you recognize and cope with your emotions and physical sensations health.
It’s used to treat many conditions, including eating disorders, depression, anxiety, and various food-related behaviors.
Mindful eating is about using mindfulness to reach a state of full attention to your experiences, cravings, and physical cues when eating.

Fundamentally, mindful eating involves:
- eating slowly and without distraction
- listening to physical hunger cues and eating only until you’re full
- distinguishing between true hunger and non-hunger triggers for eating
- engaging your senses by noticing colors, smells, sounds, textures, and flavors
- learning to cope with guilt and anxiety about food
- eating to maintain overall health and well-being
- noticing the effects food has on your feelings and body
- appreciating your food
These things allow you to replace automatic thoughts and reactions with more conscious, health-promoting responses.
Why should you try mindful eating?
Today’s fast-paced society offers people an abundance of food choices.
On top of that, distractions have shifted attention away from the actual act of eating toward televisions, computers, and smartphones.
Eating has become a mindless act, often done quickly. This can be problematic since it takes time for your brain to register that you’re full.
If you eat too fast, the fullness signal may not arrive until you have already eaten too much. This is very common in binge eating disorder (BED).
By eating mindfully, you restore your attention and slow down, making eating an intentional act instead of an automatic one.
What’s more, by increasing your recognition of physical hunger and fullness cues, you can distinguish between emotional and true physical hunger.
You also increase your awareness of triggers that make you want to eat, even though you’re not necessarily hungry.
Knowing your triggers allows you to create a space between them and your response, giving you the time and freedom to choose how to react.