10 Mindful Eating Posts To Improve Your Relationship With Food

Today I’m sharing 10 mindful eating posts to give you tips, inspiration, and resources to improve your eating mindset. 

How I got started eating more mindfully

My journey with food has taken a few turns. If you’ve been following KERF since its original days, you may remember that I started my weight loss journey food journaling and calorie counting. When I read the book SuperFoods HealthStyle, which is packed with research on the connection between food and health, I had a huge lightbulb moment that being healthy wasn’t about deprivation or thinness. Instead health is about nourishing your body with nutrient dense foods.

This of course led me down the path to become a Registered Dietitian as I became focused on properly fueling with nutritious food. You can read about the two and a half years I went back to school. And while becoming a RD is still one of my proudest accomplishments, my view on food and eating has certainly shifted and evolved (for the better) since my pre-RD, weight loss days.

More recently, I have fully embraced mindful eating and prioritized listening to my body most of all: How does food make me feel? Why am I hungry? What am I in the mood for?

My goal for this blog has always been to help you feel good in your body through wholesome nutrition and mindful eating. So, I went to my Healthy Mindset page and sorted through the dozens of posts looking for what I feel are the 10 most helpful topics, both written by me and by contributing dietitians to KERF. I wanted them in one easy-to-find resource page where readers can Pin (all of these graphics are Pinterest-optimized!) and browse as easily as possible. I’d love to hear which post resonates most with you!

10 Mindful Eating Posts To Improve Your Relationship With Food

1. Hunger Is the Best Sauce

Hunger is not necessarily pleasant, but it’s something that I want to feel everyday. How often are you hungry? 3 times a day? Rarely? Never? What is real hunger like? Check out this post for how I address hunger – it really is the best sauce!

2. The Crossroads of Happy & Healthy

Where happy and healthy intersect – that’s where I want to live. Here are 3 tips to help you get healthier without saying no to things that make you happy.

3. Do You Eat To Live Or Live To Eat?

Back when I started KERF in 2007, I would have labeled myself as someone who “lives to eat.” The percentage of time that I thought about food was high. My brain was often drifting to thoughts like: What should I have for a snack? What can I do to prep for dinner? What would be a good recipe for the goat cheese in the fridge? I would never have dreamed of skipping a meal and rolled my eyes when people said “I forgot to eat!” Check out this post for how I shifted towards eat to live.

4. Body Image Like A Cavewoman

I was talking with a friend recently about body image. She had said she was “5 pounds heavier than normal” and didn’t know whether she should put the effort in to tone up again or just settle in where she was for a new phase of life. I said to her: “Imagine you are a cavewoman. Would a caveman think you looked hot?”*

Think about your body as a human body in the context of the millions of years of humans. It’s only in the last few decades that we’ve gotten so strict with standards of abs and tricep definition and looking completely toned in a bikini.

5. Revisiting Intuitive Eating

Several years ago, I read the book Intuitive Eating and wrote a post about it. In this post, I revisit the Intuitive Eating concepts and share how my thoughts and actions have or have not changed over time.

6. The Intersection of Nutrition & Mental Health

How does food influence our mood and how does our mood influence our food? Do you use food to deal with your emotions? Do you ever feel guilty for eating something? Are you often thinking to yourself “today I start over with that diet?” Do you ever ‘numb out’ while eating and then all of a sudden realize you ate the entire bag of chips? In this post, Melissa Preston, a dietitian and therapist specializing in the treatment of eating disorders and food addictions, shares ways to stop these behaviors.

7. Eating Mindfully

Do you know when you’re hungry or full? Do you stop eating when your plate is done or when you’re full? Are you taking time out of your day for meals? In this post, Dietitian Lauren Fowler shares her tips on mindful eating – whether you’re just starting out on weight loss or needing a reminder to slow down and listen to your body.

8. How To Have a Mindful Holiday

No one wants to spend the holiday season deprived of its delicious abundance. But no one wants to wake up on the first day of the new year (or after any big holiday for that mater) feeling like you blew through party season and can’t remember a thing you ate or drank. Here are some tips to have your most mindful holiday season yet.

9. Emotional Eating: What Are You Really Hungry For?

Reflecting on my own emotional eating, there are times that I reach for food that have nothing to do with real hunger. So, what’s the difference between real and fake hungry? Check out this post for how Oprah (yes, the one and only!) turned a light bulb on for me regarding emotional eating with the question: “What are you really hungry for?”

10. You Can’t Have It All

Here are some tips for mindful eating at parties and special occasions where it is easy to have a little bit of everything. You can have it all; just not all at once.

Want more? Check out the Healthy Mindset archives!