After Christmas holiday the keyword is detox. Everybody starts the New Year with a list of good intentions: more gym and healthy food, less wine and sweets. I clearly did it mine too and I was extremely sad when I had the last slice of Panettone…can you imagine 12 months without it??? It will be a very long year!

Anyway, it’s January and it’s time for a fresh start, for a new project. It’s time to clear your mind, reduce stress and improve your healthy habits. Why don’t try mindfulness techniques? Meditation, yoga and breathing exercises can help you achieve the state of mindful awareness in daily life, without interpretation or judgement. Over the past two decades, there has been a dramatic increase in randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of mindfulness interventions. Good numbers of RCTs have demonstrated that mindful interventions, in combination with the associated medical treatment, improve outcomes in multiple health and psychologic domains

One of the interesting mindfulness application is mindful eating. This could be an effective weight-loss strategy, as recent researches have shown It helps you focus your senses on exploring and tasting your food, be more conscious of every bite and reduce stress-related overeating. With the practice of mindful eating, you will learn to pay attention to what your body needs and what it doesn’t. Mindful eating forces you to rely on internal signal on the contrary, most traditional diets lead us to pay attention to externals, such as “eat this, don’t eat that”.

Let’s see some tips that can help you practice mindful eating:

1. Before you eat ask yourself “Am I really hungry? Am I eating because I’m bored or tired or sad?” These questions help you assess why you’re eating
2. Sit down and reserve time for your meal. Avoid distractions, turn off the TV, computer and put away your phone. Recent studies have shown that distractions during meal make us overeat as we don’t notice the amount of what we are eating.
3. Be grateful for the food in front you
4. Take five deep breaths before start eating
5. Chew very slow
6. Don’t turn down your favourite comfort food because the more you forbid yourself a treat the more likely you are to eat it up when you are tired

Mindfulness is a really interesting way to approach your daily life. Years of researches have shown some positive results in people who practice mindfulness and a lot of studies are still ongoing to better understand it. Remember that mindfulness practice is not a replacement for medical treatment.

If you would like to know something more I recommend Jon Kabat-Zinn books that can help you start to practice.

Live the moment, be here now and breath.