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Last updated on February 22nd, 2024 at 08:55 pm
With all the dieting and healthism jargon floating around, it can feel impossible to know how to enjoy food.
Enjoying food can mean:
- Choosing foods that taste good
- Finding foods that boost your energy
- Dining with people you care about
- Savoring the moment during a meal
Your food and mood are often a tight-knit pair. To truly enjoy food, we need to let go of restrictions and expectations around food. You need to let your body learn to navigate what it wants, how much it wants, and when it wants it.
This article will guide you through some of the top tips for truly enjoying food.
Tips For Enjoying Food
Eat with Others
Eating with others allows you to enjoy food by:
- Connecting food with a positive experience
- Being in the moment with food
- Sharing taste, textures and other food experiences with other people
- Sharing the experience of meal preparation with someone
- Discussing passions, talents, and aspirations alongside food
In many cultures, food is one of the primary bonding experiences that connect people. Taking away the experience of bonding experience of eating can deprive us of social connection.
Don’t Restrict
When you restrict food your body starts to overcompensate in an attempt to nourish itself. You will often find yourself obsessed with food and lacking the pleasure of eating altogether.
Food restriction, both mental and physical can cause:
- Binge eating
- Agitation
- Decreased concentration
- Overeating
- Head hunger
- Digestive issues
If you are avoiding certain foods, or limiting how much of certain foods you can have you will not enjoy any of the foods that you have.
Eat Food That Tastes Good
Too many of us try to find foods that fit diet culture expectations or might promote weight loss. The reality is, these foods usually suck! And they don’t help us enjoy food in any way.
You can’t focus on zero or low-calorie foods and expect to enjoy it.
Eat Food that Makes You Feel Good
When you’re eating food notice:
- How your body feels while you eat the food
- How your body fees 1 hour after you eat the food
- Your energy levels after the meal
- How the food makes you feel emotionally during the meal
Food should satisfy you emotionally and physically before, during and after the meal. However, it’s important to remember that rules about food can lead to unnecessary food guilt.
Food guilt does not mean that your meal was not emotionally satisfying or that you should stop eating those foods. Instead, it means that you might need to challenge your fears around food that comes from a history of dieting.
Don’t Rush Your Meal
Eating fast can mean that you are:
- Dissociating from a meal
- Not properly digesting your food
- Have waited too long to eat
- Not reaping the social benefits of sharing a meal with others
While sometimes it might be necessary to eat fast if you’re truly in a rush, slow down to truly enjoy your food.
Be Present
Have you ever gone from beginning to end of a meal so quickly that five minutes later you’ve almost forgotten what you’ve eaten? If that’s ever happened to you, you definitely were not present enough during those moments to truly enjoy the food.
Be present at meals by:
- Minimizing distractions like television, cell phones, or work
- Sitting at the table to eat a meal
- Thinking about the tastes and textures of the meal and how it makes you feel
Mindful Eating Vs. Intuitive Eating
Mindful eating is a part of the full intuitive eating practice.
Mindful eating involves:
- Tuning in and exploring the tastes, textures, and experiences of a meal or snack.
- Slowing down the food experience
- Tuning into the body’s responses of eat a bite of food
- Eliminating all distractions during the mindful eating experience
Intuitive eating involves:
- trusting your body to know what foods will properly nourish
- The overall experience of food throughout the day(s)
- honoring taste and emotional preferences at mealtime
- Distinguishing hunger and fullness
- honoring different types of hunger.
Mindful eating can be distinguished from intuitive eating as it is the sensory and emotional experiences of a single dining experience. You will use mindful eating as an intuitive eater, but they are not the same.
Mindful eating and intuitive eating are separate (but overlapping) practices that are both helpful to truly enjoy food and establish healthy eating habits.
Steps For Mindful Eating
Give mindful eating a try by following these steps:
- Select a food. Carbohydrate foods work well (crackers, chocolate)
- Smell the food
- Observe how the food feels in your hand or on the fork
- Put the food on the tip of your tongue (don’t bite down)
- Notice the tastes and textures of the food on the tip of your tongue
- Bite into the food. Let the food sit on your tongue.
- Notice how the taste and texture change the longer it’s in your mouth
- Begin to chew as slowly as possible
- You will notice taste and texture changes
- Notice how foods get sweeter, coat your mouth, etc as you move through each bite
Mindful Nutrition
Mindful nutrition involves nourishing your body with a variety of nutrients while honoring your hunger and emotional needs surrounding food
Try these things to increase mindful nutrition:
- Prepping your meals and snacks for easy access.
- Eating dessert first whenever you feel like it
- Learning to distinguish between appetite and hunger
- Eat regularly to avoid extreme hunger
- Recognize and challenge mental food restriction
To truly enjoy food choose it with care, make the prep work easy, and listen to your body when it tells you what it wants.
Keeping a well-stocked pantry can ensure you have access to a variety of foods to keep you emotionally and physically satisfied.
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