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Mindful Eating

Give a meal, or even a few bites, your full attention. Taste, texture, the simple fact of eating, instead of eating on autopilot with your eyes on a screen.

A classic entry point to mindfulness, often taught in MBSR with a single raisin. We're borrowing the exercise, not inventing it.

How to do it

  1. 1

    Pick a meal or a snack, and put your phone out of reach. One meal is plenty. You don't have to do this every time you eat.

  2. 2

    Before the first bite, pause. Look at the food. Notice its colors, its smell, the fact that you're about to eat.

  3. 3

    Take a bite, and put the fork or the food down while you chew.

  4. 4

    Notice the actual taste and texture, and how they change as you chew. Eat slowly enough to keep noticing.

  5. 5

    Watch for the urge to rush, to reach for your phone, or to be somewhere else. When you drift, come back to the eating.

  6. 6

    Do this for a whole meal, or just the first few bites, then eat normally.

What this is not

  • It is not a diet or a weight-loss technique. It's an attention practice that happens to involve food.
  • It is not about eating 'correctly' or turning every meal into a ceremony. A few mindful bites counts.
  • It is not something to grade yourself on. If you finish the meal on autopilot, that's information, not failure.

Sources & notes

Where this essay makes a factual claim, here is what it rests on, and what that evidence does and doesn't settle. Contemplative teachings and our own interpretations are labelled as such, not dressed up as science.

  1. The present-moment, non-judgmental orientation this practice uses.Teaching

    Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living (Delacorte, 1990).

    The eating exercise is a staple of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. A teaching, not an empirical claim.

  2. On what mindful eating does and doesn't do.Our synthesis

    Attention Science synthesis.

    Mindful eating has mainly been studied in relation to eating behavior, with mixed results. We offer it here only as a way to practise attention in an everyday activity, not as a health intervention.

The thinking behind it

What Is Mindfulness? (And What It Isn't)9 min