When trying to lose weight, it helps to have lots of different tools in your tool box. This Hub will discuss the usefulness of mindful eating for people interested in long term (i.e., lasting) weight loss. It is a relatively simple set of techniques, and incorporating them into your day to day life is simply a matter of developing (and then maintaining) a new set of eating habits, or a new eating style.

Mindful eating, boiled down to its essence, is all about paying attention (i.e., being mindful) about what you are eating, how much you are eating, why you are eating and the pleasure you are taking from what you are eating. There are a few different ways to practice mindful eating. This Hub will explore a few of them.

The first step to take when practicing mindful eating for weight loss is to slow down. The best way to eat mindfully is to really chew each bite of your food very thoroughly. Different nutritionists and diet experts have different suggestions for how much you should chew each bite of food, but a lot of them seem to suggest that twenty bites is a good number.

Also, take small to medium size bites (as opposed to huge mouthfuls) in order to make your meal last longer. Another related tip that mindful eaters suggest is to put down your silverware between each bite. This is another effective way to slow down the entire eating process. When you eat slowly and mindfully, you are more prone to eat smaller portions because you are not mindlessly cramming large mouthfuls of food into your mouth.

Another aspect of mindful eating for weight loss is to focus (or really zero your attention in) on the food that you are eating right now, with no distractions. In other words, don’t eat while working or while watching television. When you focus on what you are eating, this allows you to really be fully present in the experience, to enjoy your food at a reasonable pace. When people are distracted while eating, by the television or the computer or other things, they don’t focus on their food and therefore they tend to eat more of it than they really need or desire.

Eat until satisfied rather than eating to the bursting point. Have you ever noticed how uncomfortable your stomach (and indeed your whole body) feels after you overeat? It is not a pleasant feeling at all. Mindful eating involves eating until your stomach feels comfortably satisfied, no more and no less. There is never any need to finish your entire plateful of food if you are not that hungry. Sometimes people feel obligated to polish off every single bite that is in front of them, but this is really not necessary.

When you eat mindfully, you pay better attention to the taste, aroma and texture of your food, which means that eating can once again be a pleasurable act rather than a guilt producing act. Eating is one of life’s pleasures, to be sure, and mindful eating for weight loss (or just in general) can once again help you see food and eating in that light.