The philosophy of eating is filled with countless rules that are sometimes difficult to follow. In search of the easiest possible way to eat healthy in today's fast and busy life, people often follow certain commands or at least try to follow them without even knowing why they are useful.
No matter which rule you have tried to follow in the search for a healthy body, one thing is certain: none of these rules allowed you to enjoy your food.
Awareness of what and how much you enter into your body is the key to succeeding in implementing these rules as a way of life. Awareness of what we eat again requires certain knowledge and observation of rules. However, with the help of something called mindful eating you will be able to enjoy your food and be healthy.
Beginning with the classic definition of mindfulness which means being fully aware of the present, mindful eating means being fully conscious about the experience of eating and drinking.
According to The Center for Mindful Eating, this type of eating strategy is followed by a few principals. Namely, the awareness of what we eat represents the use of all of our senses in the selection of food that is together healthy and satisfying.
Allowing yourself to be aware of all the positive and negative aspects of the food you eat without prejudice, will give you a new dimension of your meal and enable you to make better choices with nutrition that can contribute to your health.
This kind of eating requires a mindset that will help you develop a better ability to avoid distractions, which in return should lead you to better digestion. As the digital world is constantly producing new inventions that help people in their everyday lives, there happen to be mobile applications created precisely for mindful eating.
Am I Hungry?
Michelle May, M.D the founder of “Am I Hungry” has come up with a brilliant idea about a mindful eating app that will guide through the process of eating healthy. The app is programmed to be your virtual coach, which will help you gain control over your eating habits, but also pay attention to emotional eating.
Using this app, you will be able to distinguish physical hunger and whether your body really needs calories, or if you eat to cope with stress which is called emotional eating, or maybe you are feeling the social hunger that appears as a result of social pressure. This app can help.
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Jinglow
Jinglow is multi-functional mindful applications that in its range of options offer numerous settling sounds specifically designed for mood improvement and inner peace. This application will help you focus your thoughts on the present and be fully present at the moment while you are eating.
For people who suffer from various eating disorders, mindful eating is like a squeezing mechanism for negative thoughts and guilty feelings.
A recently performed study among adolescent girls found that within six months the girls who implemented this method showed a significant reduction in symptoms of eating disorders, lower eating restrictions and weight reduction.
You can help yourself by using the various options that Jinglow offers and try eating healthier without feeling any guilt.
Mindful Bite
A 2008 Japanese study involving around 60,000 respondents showed that there is a link between gaining weight and chewing. Namely, the study showed that the speed with which we eat affects obesity, BMI, and the volume of the waist.
The Mindful Bite is an application designed precisely for that. Although its options are not strictly aimed at preventing the growth of obesity, the way in which it works can be used for this purpose. Mindful bite works in a way that it tells the user when to take the next bite.
The main purpose of the application is to make the users think more about the food while they are eating and to make the whole experience more pleasant and joyful.
Mindful Eating Tracker
This application is a tracker in the true sense of the word. Mindful Eating Tracker offers options that allow you to follow the essential parts of the mindful eating as eating with gratitude, satisfaction, eating from hunger or feeling thirst.
Through different ways of tracking, you will manage to control your hunger, and maintain a positive attitude towards the whole concept of nutrition. The application itself is made by an experienced mindful eater who strives to make you think while you eat and to distinguish the different types of hunger. The application offers functions for monitoring the time indicated for eating and exercise but also consists of a weight tracker.
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Eat Drink and Be Mindful
Eat Drink and Be Mindful is slightly different from the rest, but with the same goal, that is to improve the eating experience. Its options are divided into six parts, among which the hunger scale that is designed to help you differentiate whether you are physically or emotionally hungry.
Another option is the diary in which you can write notes on how your body and mind felt while you ate, as well as a calendar intended for taking into account how mindful you ate. The calendar also includes an alarm meant to notify you about mindful eating. The app also includes a hunger scale graph and option for news and events calculated for the same purpose.
Let us know if any of these apps help you become a more mindful eater.
