Mindful eating involves real food choices to nourish our body and avoiding processed and packaged foods.

It is about choosing organic, spray free foods to help minimise the toxins we bring into our bodies.

It is also thinking about the meat we consume and the diet of that animal. Was it raised on a natural diet or was it fed a processed food diet? It is important to understand what healthy food is; whole foods as nature created them. It is really the opposite of gulping down half chewed food on the run because we don’t have time.

Too often foods of convenience have become the modern day normal, skipping meals, eating on the run, at the desk, or in the car have become common because we have the perception that we just don’t have time to prepare real food and take the time to eat it slowly.

Every meal is a new opportunity to change bad food habits that have slowly crept in. We can create and maintain a healthy balance.

Baking and steaming are great ways to prepare nutritious meals in a short time frame. Batch cooking one day a week and freezing meals in advance is another way to ensure you have great meals that can be reheated quickly when you are busy.

You can always make a little extra each time you cook a meal and either have it for breakfast the next day or freeze it for later.

Eating well should be important to us, we want to nourish our body and give it the best we can. Sharing meals is a great way to connect to each other, with family and friends, to talk and laugh and feel relaxed.

Food can really bring people together, and has done traditionally, forever. We should never feel that we don’t have the time to eat. When we allow ourselves to be distracted, that is when digestive disorders can start to emerge. We want to be in tune with our body, smelling, chewing and properly tasting our food. We want to be connected and listening to what it is saying to us, noticing when we feel full and satiated. Notice also, how you feel after eating, do you feel tired, bloated, or looking for something sweet? These are also signs of digestive dysfunction.

If digestion is not working correctly then this has a flow on effect to all of our body as we are not able to properly use the nutrients from our food to fuel our body. Have you ever really thought about digestion? Like so many things in our body, it is a super smart set of processes that sequentially lead one to the next, in a totally sealed off section, designed to protect the rest of the body from the highly acidic environment required to break down our food into smaller particles that can be absorbed and used to create energy.

In order for digestion to work properly we need to be in a parasympathetic state, a relaxed state, we cannot digest if we are stressed.

Mindful eating is about choices we can make, by taking the time to eat in a relaxed manner, and in doing so, allow digestion take place. You have the choice to change the way you eat, allow the time to be back in control of your eating habits, choose slow food, not fast food!