There are 4 major differences between mindless eating and mindful eating. Listed below are ways of treating food that should be inculcated in people right from childhood so that it becomes a family and slowly a cultural tradition so that food is worshipped as a gift not treated as a commodity that we can afford.

Eating a little more when the stomach is full is not good. Knowing when to stop is good – From our childhood we find pleasure in indulging in food that we love. It's not our fault completely but also the fault of our elders who have showered love on us by overfeeding us until we got in the habit of having that extra bite, that extra spoonful, that extra morsel of something that pleased us. We need to get into mindfulness and should know when to say “no” to not only people who are forcing us for that extra portion but to ourselves as well. It will require many months of practice to reach this point but we need to start now.

Emotional eating is not good Eating only when the body requires food is good – All of us quite often open the door of the fridge to have a quick munch when we are bored or search through the snack jars to have a handful of something in between work just to de-stress. If we are sad, we believe that a bit of binge eating would lift our mood. But these are mindless eating practices. We need to switch on to the habit of eating when our body tells us to do that, not when our emotional mind tells us to do so.

Eating randomly anywhere anytime is not good. Eating at a set time with others is good – Do we even realize how much we eat alone even when we are staying in a family? We eat without realizing while working on our laptops. We eat something or the other while roaming around the house when the phone call is too long and boring and we are not able to disconnect it. All this eating is apart from having set meals with our families on the set time. We need to stop this random eating and stick to the set family time only. Anything in between is mindless eating.

Eating with the thought that the food belongs to us as it has come from our hard-earned money is not good. Eating with the thought of where the food comes to us is good – Just because we can afford food, we do not have the license to eat it mindlessly. We should get mature enough  to look at food from a broader perspective; from the different factors involved right from the time when the seed is sowed to the time when it is well packaged and displayed in super bazar racks for us to pick up. If we start viewing food from the larger societal and economical aspect, we would be able to respect it more instead of considering it a product of personal gratification only.

Be a mindful eater and influence others around you to be so too!