By Juliana Ronn, First Mile Care, Director of Operations

“Mindfulness” has become a popular concept in the last few years as a healthy strategy for dealing with our stress-filled lives. When practicing mindfulness, you focus on the present moment. You concentrate your awareness on your current thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment. Mindfulness is often linked to calming techniques like meditation.

Did you know that you can apply mindfulness techniques to eating? The close connection between your stomach and your brain can be influenced through the practice of mindfulness. Mindful eating is learning to listen to your body’s natural hunger cues so that you eat when you experience true, physical hunger and not just the hunger that originates in your head that is affected by your emotional state.

Coach Kathy Gregory recently offered a short training in mindful eating as part of the First Mile Care Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) webinar series on “Diabetes Prevention in Action.” Kathy is a holistic health and wellness coach certified through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition.

Can You Hear Your Body Speak?

Identifying the key triggers for your eating can help you understand the true message your body is trying to tell you. In this webinar, Kathy reviews the questions to ask yourself to gauge if you’re eating emotionally, how to assess your cravings on the Hunger Scale, the value of logging your daily intake in a food journal, and how to practice eating mindfully.

As Coach Karalyn Cass noted in our earlier Food Journaling webinar, your body naturally tells you when you’re hungry, and warns you when it’s time to stop eating. Unfortunately, we often ignore the signals. Becoming more mindful of the sight, smell, touch and taste of your food will slow down your eating, give your stomach time to connect with your brain, and help you to interpret your body’s natural signals.

Mindful eating requires practice to be effective. Listen to the audio recording so you can follow along as Coach Kathy explains how you can develop control over emotional eating. She’ll take you through a mindful eating exercise, so be sure to have a healthy snack on hand!

To learn more about how you can benefit from the First Mile Care Diabetes Prevention Program, take our prediabetes risk test and get started today!