Tips for portion control and mindful eating are essential to your growth and weight management. Sometimes we find it difficult to control portion sizes due to the temptations of abundant food choices or options. Other times we are engaged in mindless or emotional eating, if this is you then you need not worry so much. In this blog post, we help you understand and implement effective portion control strategies that are key to your success.
Portion control is all about being mindful of the amount of food you eat. It helps us avoid overeating and still provides our body with the necessary nutrients. It’s about being conscious of your serving sizes and eating just enough food to satisfy your hunger without overeating.
However, it can be quite challenging to stick to portion control due to several factors like mindless eating, emotional eating, or being faced with an invitation to delicious foods. But with a little bit of planning and practice, it’s possible to master portion control.
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Mindful eating involves being fully present and paying attention to your food and the process of eating. It’s about utilizing your full senses while eating, being body, mind, and emotionally present while eating and really noticing what you are eating and how it makes you feel. It’s about being conscious of your hunger and fullness cues and stopping when you’re satisfied instead of overeating. Mindful eating can help you enjoy your food more and feel more satisfied with smaller portions. It can also help you develop a healthier relationship with food.
How mindful eating helps portion control
There are several ways eating mindfully can help you with controlling portions and they include.
- Eating mindfully helps you notice when you are full and makes you stop eating. When you pay attention to how your body feels while you are eating, it will enable you to stop eating when you are full. You hereby avoid overeating.
- Eating mindfully helps you savor your food more. When your senses are alert and heightened while you eat, you tend to savor the taste and feel more satisfied with smaller portions. Here, your portions are controlled and you eat more mindfully.
- Mindful eating helps you tune into your body’s signals and identify the difference between physical hunger and emotional hunger. Practicing mindful eating will help you distinguish between physical hunger and any other type of hunger e.g. emotional hunger. When you can avoid eating for reasons like boredom, stress, or unhappiness, it contributes to better portion control.
Tips for portion control and mindful eating
There are many strategies to achieving portion control and mindful eating to get all its benefits too.
- Start by being aware of how much you’re eating. Pay attention to the amount of food on your plate and how full you feel as you eat. Don’t eat mindlessly.
- Use smaller plates and bowls so you’re less likely to overeat. Use the size of plates that contain the exact size of what you want to eat, use smaller plates, and add smaller portions.
- Pay attention to your body’s hunger cues and stop eating when you feel satisfied, not stuffed. Note the difference between stuffed and satisfied so you know which one to follow. Once you are satisfied, stop eating, you must not finish everything on your plate at once.
- Slow down and savor your food, taking time to enjoy the taste and texture. Do not be in a rush to eat and go, do not eat hurriedly for any reason, take your time and savor the food. It’s better to eat a smaller portion of food but you are able to handle the taste and texture of the food.
- Be mindful of your emotions while you’re eating. Are you eating because you’re hungry or because you’re stressed or bored? Avoid emotional eating at all costs. Eat only when you are angry, don’t turn to food to deal with your organization.
- Distract yourself from cravings by taking a walk, reading a book, or talking to a friend. Not all cravings should be satisfied if you satisfy your cravings as soon as it is there. However, indulge in moderation. Don’t deny yourself food if you’re really craving something. It’s better to indulge in moderation than to feel deprived and binge later.
- Plan ahead by making healthy meals and snacks that you enjoy so you’re less likely to make unhealthy choices when you’re hungry. If you already have a healthy planned meal from the onset you are free from falling into the temptation of snacks.
Conclusion
Tips for portion control and mindful eating help you navigate the world of healthy nutritious choices.
If you have a weight management goal and a quest for growth, you would be glad to practice portion control and mindful eating.
Mindless eating thwarts your dream of gaining less weight because eating because you are bored, stressed, or unhappy is more or less like stuffing yourself with food and if you are stuffed rather than satisfied, you are on your journey to gaining weight.
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