A topic you guys always ask me about is mindless eating. Today, I’m gonna break it down for ya. I’ll help you understand how to know if you mindlessly eat, as well as how to break the pattern of mindless eating. I also created a video on this topic that you can view by clicking below:
 

 
Mindless eating is when you’re not being intentional about what you consume.
 
It all comes back to the good old concept of: what is your intention behind consumption? Is your intention to use food for health and hunger? Is your intention to enhance moments? And it’s not necessarily what your intention is, but that there is one behind eating. You don’t always need to use food for health and hunger. I don’t. I use food to celebrate a moment or to connect deeply with someone.
 
It’s when there is no intention behind consumption that it usually means you’re using food to numb emotions, self-sabotage, etc. And once you start to get into the headspace of labeling foods as “good” or “bad,” you invite shame and guilt to the party. This is why intention is such a beautiful filter.
 
Are you using food to numb/avoid emotions?
 

 
Are you using food to avoid something? Or to hurt or punish yourself? Maybe you’re using food to escape? To combat mindless eating, start to be super intentional about what you eat. How do you want to feel after you eat?
 
Before you eat, ask yourself: is this food going to enhance or deplete my vibration?
 
For example, when I wake up in the morning and have water with lemon followed by a smoothie, I feel great. This raises my vibration. But if I were to have something fried and heavy, I wouldn’t feel well, and this would deplete my vibration. That doesn’t mean that I never have that food, I just figure out beforehand if I’m ready to feel the way it will make me feel once I consume it.
 
Get present.
 
In order to avoid mindless eating, you need to be mindful. This all starts with presence. The moment before eating, check in with yourself. Are you grounded? Are you breathing? Are you connected into your body and emotions?
 
You cannot binge eat or mindlessly eat when you are present.
 
It’s when you’re all up in your head, that you’re prone to mindless eating or binge eating. Why? Because that’s when you’re checked out from reality. You are creating problems by lingering over things that happened in the past or having worry or anxiety over what could possibly happen in the future. Presence eliminates the chaos in your mind.
 

 
Here’s my top ninja strategy for overcoming mindless eating: Breath.
 
Try it right now. Take a few deep breaths. Do you feel the difference in your body just from breathing? When you incorporate breath into your everyday experience, you get grounded, centered, and connected to reality vs. what is created in the mind. It’s when you spend a majority of time in your mind, dwelling in problems that don’t exist in the present, that you turn to coping mechanisms like mindless eating.
 
Comment below and let me know how this topic lands for you. Are you prone to mindless eating? Or do you try to be intentional about the food you consume? Tell me in the comments!
 
Header Photo by Max Nelson on Unsplash