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It's nearly impossible for humans to distinguish between our eating behaviours and our emotional states. Undoubtedly, for better or worse, our feelings, attitudes, and beliefs affect how we choose to eat. You might wish to take a mindful or intuitive approach to eat if you'd like to give your diet a more concentrated aim (or free yourself from unhelpful views about food). It's simple to presume that intuitive eating and mindful eating refer to the same idea. After all, "mindful" and "intuitive" are nearly synonymous, and there are significant similarities between the two approaches. These eating strategies, however, have unique histories and differ in how they are used on a daily basis. Here is what you can anticipate, regardless of whether your path leads you toward intuitive or mindful eating (or a combination of the two).
Mindful Eating
Although it's popular right now, mindfulness isn't a really novel idea. Buddhism's early iterations are where concepts like patience, non-judgment, and living in the present came from. However, it wasn't until the 20th century that doing so to, say, a slice of pizza, became commonplace. The founder of mindfulness in the modern period is generally regarded as University of Massachusetts researcher Jon Kabat-Zinn. The Center for Mindfulness was founded by Kabat-Zinn at UMass in the late 1970s. His renowned food-related mindfulness techniques there, such chewing a raisin very slowly to experience sensations with all five senses, paved the way for adding greater intention to mealtimes.
In recent years, more practitioners have adopted mindful eating, and its fundamentals are now more widely accepted. However, mindful eating is not a diet regimen that has been patented, and there is no universal agreement on the behaviours or guiding ideas that constitute it. But at its core, mindful eating entails cultivating present-moment awareness before, during, and after meals. This may require a variety of techniques, reduce distractions while eating by, for example, turning off the TV and keeping your phone out of the way. enjoying the flavours and textures of food, consuming food while using all five senses, savouring each bite and eating more completely, squeezing out smaller chunks or putting the fork down in between each one, practising gratitude, that is, expressing thanks before eating, focusing on the body's signals of hunger and fullness while eating, acknowledging reactions to or feelings toward different foods without passing judgement.
Intuitive Eating
In contrast to mindful eating, which entails using mindfulness in all aspects of food, intuitive eating takes a more targeted approach. In spite of the fact that the two approaches have a lot in common, Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole, two dietitians, created the Intuitive Eating programme in the 1990s. Intuitive Eating seeks to liberate individuals from the constraints of unfavourable ideas about food (and frequently, about themselves), with the ultimate objective of establishing judgment-free eating. Users are taught to recognise emotional eating while simultaneously eating in response to physical hunger and satiety indicators. It assists users in developing the capacity to observe and distinguish bodily cues that indicate hunger, fullness, and satisfaction. In order to do this, the curriculum focuses on 10 core principles. Reject the diet mentality, respect your body, engage in gentle movement, honour your health with gentle nutrition, make peace with food, uncover the satiation factor, and cope with your emotions with kindness.
Conclusion
By no means are intuitive eating and mindful eating incompatible. Although several of the tenets of intuitive eating involve aspects of mindfulness, doing so does not obligate you to adopt the tenets of intuitive eating. Both ideologies discuss how our mental states can affect the foods we choose to consume, and they both promote comparable behaviours like paying attention to sensations of fullness while eating and taking joy in meals and snacks.
They each have different ways of assisting in lowering emotions of stress related to food. While Intuitive Eating uses mindfulness and other techniques to reconnect with the body and eradicate ingrained false notions about the body and food, Mindful Eating achieves this by minimising distractions during meals. Your specific wellness objectives will determine whether intuitive eating, mindful eating, or both are best for you. For instance, you might opt to employ mindful eating to increase awareness of how you're nourishing your body if you'd like to concentrate on your nutrition. However, Intuitive Eating can be a better option if your objective is to improve a dysfunctional connection with food.
