Do you ever look at a plate of food and not know what to think? Do you ever finish a meal and feel negatively for some reason, but you can’t put your finger on why? Maybe it’s time to consider a mindful eating exercise to rewire your brain to have better experiences with one of the world’s most indulgent yet necessary pleasures — a delicious meal.

What Is Mindful Eating?

Especially in Western culture, everyone eats food fast either in between shifts, while sucked into their phone, or to shave time off a long list of to-do’s. Mindful eating is a practice and mindset. Instead of eating just because you have to and as quickly as possible, you are 100% present and take your time. 

You allow yourself to fully enjoy and be appreciative of the fact you have a meal, its wonderful flavors and the company you’re enjoying it with, if applicable. You may have heard of intuitive eating, which is an entire anti-diet framework. Many of its ideals overlap with mindful eating, so if you’re curious, you can dive deeper into this evidence-based program. It leads to these benefits:

• Slower eating for improved digestion
• Reduced stress and guilt from spending time on a meal
• Fewer instances of cravings and emotional eating
• Improved weight management
• Increased body awareness of hunger and fullness cues

Let’s share a mindful eating exercise or two to get you primed for more conscious meals.

1. The Raisin Exercise

Also called the Raising Meditation, this is an eight-step process that encourages mindful eating and awareness in five simple minutes. Here’s how to do it.

1. Holding: Put a raisin in your hand and imagine this is the first time you’ve ever seen and felt a raisin.
2. Seeing: Use your full focus to view every aspect of it, including shadows, color, wrinkles and more.
3. Touching: Feel it with eyes open and closed.
4. Smelling: Put the raisin under your nose and parse the fragrance and how your nose feels.
5. Placing: Put it on your lips, then in your mouth on the tongue in separate motions to recognize how the body knows how to navigate its body to eat.
6. Tasting: Chew while noticing changes in taste, texture and bodily response.
7. Swallowing: Swallow when ready and acknowledge the urge to close on the eating experience.
8. Following: Try to notice how the raisin swims through the body, down the throat and into the stomach.

This exercise is not exclusive to raisins. Try it with as many foods as you want to remember again what it feels like to experience food like it’s a cinematic experience.

2. Take the Mindful Eating Questionnaire

A survey may be the best way to quantify your extremely qualitative and subjective experiences with food. Many offer states, which you rate on a scale of one to five — one being almost always and five being almost never. High scores reflect mindfulness while low scores indicate the opposite. Some example statements include:

• I do not love or accept my body.
• I uncontrollably eat when I experience uncomfortable or intense emotions.
• I do not know how to recognize when I am full.
• Interacting with people or the media changes how I eat.
• I feel the experience of eating feels like I’m on autopilot.

Many variations of the questionnaire exist with slightly different questions. 

3. Remove Screens from the Dinner Table

Do you eat in front of the TV or with your phone in your hand not holding a utensil? Multitasking takes our focus away from the food, distancing yourself from your hunger and fullness cues or sensory experiences. If you take away the most distracting influences at the dinner table, you’ll find food starts to taste more fulfilling and flavorful.

4. Do a Mindful Meal Challenge

Many mindful meal challenges are on the internet, ranging from five days to 28. The point of these frameworks is to provide structure. Training your body requires regular exercise, just like the mind requires regimented reps to practice a mental shift. Many mindful meal challenges include these tasks:

• Connect with mindful eating communities and find a support system
• Remove distractions that prevent you from eating with presence
• Do mindfulness meditations before and after meals
• Practicing savoring every bit
• Recognizing the differences in types of hunger, such as biological, flavor and emotional

5. Ask Pre-Meal Questions

Mindful eating questionnaires allow you to identify your relationship with food, while asking yourself a list of pre-meal questions is like priming yourself for success. It makes your mind and body pause before shoveling in a meal, regardless of how hungry you are. Before eating anything, even if it’s just a snack, ponder:

• Am I stressed, bored or emotional?
• Why am I eating?
• Am I even hungry?
• Am I grateful for this meal?
• Will I feel good after eating this meal?

6. Change How You Use Utensils

You may not even realize how much the way you hold your spoons and forks alters how you eat. If the utensil stays firm in your hand with no interruptions, food enters faster, giving you no time to think.

However, you can try hacking your brain into slowing down without mindfulness or interrogation. All you have to do is place your utensil down between each bite. You can only pick it back up after you swallow. This may make you realize you tend to put more than one bite in your mouth at a time, when taking it slow is better.

Another method is to try eating with your nondominant hand. This makes eating a more conscious effort because it isn’t as intuitive.

7. Chew Differently

You don’t have to do this for the rest of your life, but until you develop a mindful eating habit, you have to change how you think about food while you’re eating it. During each bite, notice these qualities one at a time about the food:

• Taste
• Shape
• Texture
• Smell
• Temperature

Try Mindful Eating Exercises

Food is too essential to have complex feelings about, before, during or after. Instead of seeing eating as a purely mandatory or sensory experience, consider a mindful approach. Appreciating and respecting your ability to eat a wonderful dish should never be taken for granted. The nutrients help the body grow healthily and support your longevity. The faster you change your perspective about eating, the more mouthwatering food becomes.