If you feel like you are trapped in a cycle of restrictive dieting and binging, mindful eating is something you should try to rebuild a positive relationship with food. In this guide, I have ranked and reviewed the 5 Best Mindful Eating Apps, so you can pick one, that suits your preferences.
Diets may work for some people, but the truth is that over 90% of diets fail. They cause binge-eating episodes, foster unhealthy relationships with food, leading to guilt, anxiety and stress around eating. Usually, the weight loss is followed by regaining the weight and you end up in a yo-yo dieting cycle.
If this feels related to you, then mindful eating is something you should try. Mindful eating will make you more aware of hunger and fullness cues, which in turn allows you to address any negative or unconscious eating patterns. By practicing mindful eating, you can cultivate a more conscious and positive relationship with food, leading to improved health and sustainable weight loss.
If you have no previous experience with mindful eating, an app can be a great place to start.
In this post, I have reviewed and ranked the best Mindful Eatings Apps of 2023, so you can choose one that feels right to you.
Let´s get to the list.
What Are the Best Mindful Eating Apps?
Here are my picks for the best mindful eating apps to use this year.
1. Am I Hungry?® Virtual Coach
Am I Hungry?® founder Michelle May designed this app to help you end futile restrictive dieting and resolve mindless and emotional eating.
The goal is for you to start listening to your body again in order to finally develop a healthy relationship with food. When you get started, the app will pose you questions to be more mindful about why, when, what, how, how much and where you eat.
It offers a hunger and fullness scale to tune into your real physical hunger feelings and learn to distinguish it from emotional hunger. You can also find many strategies to help you if you are reaching for food without actually being physically hungry.
Key Features
- The most important feature of this app is the Mindful Eating cycle, which helps you make a conscious decision about why, when, what, how, how much and where you eat.
- The app is designed to complement the Am I Hungry?® program, which offers books, retreats, coaching, self-paced classes and a support community.
- The app doesn´t have many complicated features and offers a great way to get started with mindful eating, guiding you to tune in to your physical and emotional hunger cues, helping you to finally break old automatic or habitual chain reactions.
Pricing
- There is no free version available.
- One time purchase for $2.99 (or 3.33€).
Used for:
- Beginners – if you have never tried mindful eating before this app is great as the Mindful Eating Cycle is very easy to use with every meal.
- Anyone who has read the book “Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat” by Michelle May, or has participated in any part of the Am I Hungry? program.
Cons:
- There is no free trial version for this app.
- It is not possible to visualize your progress over time, set specific goals, or upload recipes or pictures.
Download Am I Hungry?® from Google Play or the App Store.
2. Eat Right Now ®
The Eat Right Now® concept has been developed by Dr. Jud Brewer, psychiatrist and internationally known expert in mindfulness training. What makes this program really unique are scientific studies, which prove that Eat Right Now can reduce craving-related eating by 40%.
If you subscribe to this app you will get access to several modules of guided video and audio lessons by Dr. Jud Brewer to help with binge eating and emotional eating. Along with the guided lessons, there are in-app tools to help you recognize the difference between stress, boredom, and hunger so you can ride out cravings and change your relationship to eating.
Key Features:
- Check-Ins: You can report how you´re feeling and the app will provide a mindfulness practice to help you understand and work through those feelings.
- Stress Test: In order to identify the source of stress when you feel like stress eating. The app will then walk you through an awareness exercise to help you release the stress.
- Craving Tool & Want-O-Meter: To measure the intensity of your cravings, so you can understand if you’re eating emotionally or if you’re truly hungry.
- Mindful Eating Exercises: Access to helpful skills you can learn in order to overcome emotional eating. You can review these exercises in the app whenever you need them.
- Online Community: You’ll become part of an active community of people who know what you’re going through. You can also track your progress through online journaling.
Pricing:
- Free trial: They offer a 30-day money back guarantee.
- Monthly plan ($ 24,99), 6 months plan ($ 99,99) and annual plan ($ 129,99).
Used for:
- Anyone who is looking for a very comprehensive program in mindful eating and doesn´t mind investing some money, time and effort.
- Anyone who is currently struggling with overeating or binge-eating.
Cons:
- The program is quite expensive, especially if you are not sure if mindful eating is something that will work for you.
Download Eat Right Now ® from Google Play or the App Store.
3. Shutterbite
Shutterbite is a mindful eating apps that focuses on food journaling. But unlike most apps for food tracking, you can track details such as hunger, fullness, mood, why you ate and much more.
This app also lets you upload pictures of what you eat, which is also very helpful to be more mindful about your meals’ quality and quantity. Another great advantage of this app is the reduced time needed to log your meals. Shutterbite lets you track what you eat in seconds. No more searching and saving, and no calorie counting.
Key features:
- Simple and Easy Meal Tracking: Track what you are eating using only a picture.
- Customizable Food Journal: You can add, edit and remove tracking options such as hunger, fullness, why you ate, where you ate, how you feel after eating, and more.
- Create your own goals: Create goals within the app that align with the health goals that you want to create. You can track goals on a daily, weekly, or monthly cadence.
Visualize your eating habits: You can view all of your data summarized with detailed graphs and displays. See how your eating habits are changing over time by seeing the trends in your data.
Pricing:
- Free to download and use until you reach 15 saved meals or 30 saved check-ins.
- Monthly plan ($ 5,99), 6 months plan ($ 28,99) and annual plan ($ 43,99).
Used for:
- Anyone who already has some experience with mindful eating and doesn´t need much guidance and support.
- Anyone who enjoys food tracking and wants to try something new
Cons:
- Shutterbite doesn´t include any videos or online lessons to explain the basics of mindful eating
- The free threshold is quite small, you might not be reading to commit to a monthly plan after logging only 15 meals.
Download Shutterbite from Google Play or the App Store.
4. Peace With Food
Peace With Food was created by a Registered Dietitian and Ph.D Counselor and uses a specially designed Rhythm Tracker that helps you check-in with your body throughout the day (you choose the frequency) and at each meal/snack. This will help you become intentional about tasting and enjoying your food while focusing on your hunger and fullness cues.
Peace With Food is based on the theory that dieting disrupts both your mind space and your hunger cues. Instead, when you “stay in the gray” you avoid over-eating and under-eating; which both lead to carrying extra weight and the inevitable chaotic eating.
Key features:
- Access to a library of educational videos: Intuitive Eating professionals answering your most asked questions.
- Rhythm Tracker: The app will guide you in order to “stay-in-the-gray” throughout the day and you can access calendar summaries of your daily hunger and fullness snapshots.
- Check-ins: Personalized frequency of notifications to check-in with your body and “end-the-day” settings.
- Integrates with the Apple Watch: Check-in notifications to “Be Present” integrate with the Apple Watch.
- Online community: Get an invitation to the private Peace With Food Facebook group for even more support.
Pricing:
- 7-day free trial.
- Monthly plan ($ 5,99), 3 months plan ($ 14,99), and annual plan ($ 49,99).
Used for:
- Anyone who looking for an intermediate solution, with some guidance in the form of short videos, and simple reminders to be more mindful of hunger and fullness cues.
- Anyone who likes to use the Apple Watch to receive notifications.
Cons:
- There is no option to upload pictures.
- Apart from the graph of the Rhythm Tracker it is not possible to view your progress over time.
Download Peace With Food from Google Play or the App Store.
5. MEAL - Mindful Eating and Living
MEAL is directed at women, who are not connected anymore to their body signals and emotions as a consequence of years of dieting. Their goal is to break down restrict-binge cycles and reconnect women with their bodies’ natural signals.
The app was developed by licensed dietitians, nutrition coaches, and cognitive behavioral therapists, so it can offer qualified information to not only to help you break down nutrition in a digestible way but also guide you to release any emotional blockages you may have surrounding food, so you understand the what, where, how, and why of what you eat.
Key Features:
- Guided sessions: The app offers theoretical and practical sessions with certified psychologists and nutritionists, as well as articles about mindfulness and awareness.
- Quizzes and questionnaires about your eating behavior with personal insights based on your answers
- Apple Health app integration: MEAL allows you to personalize your journey in accordance with your cycle and activity
Pricing:
- 7-day free trial.
- After the free trial you can sign up to different paid plans with a price range between $9.99 and $49.99.
Used for:
- Great for women, as it synchronizes with your cycle and activity through the Apple Health app.
- Anyone who wants to dedicate some time every day to learning about mindful eating.
Cons:
- This app is only available on the App Store for iPhone.
- The app occasionally shows some technical problems.
Download MEAL from the App Store.
Conclusion
Using a great app for mindful eating can be extremely helpful, and help you stick to your plan in order to achieve sustainable results.
When choosing a mindful eating app, consider the exact features you need (and the cost) before making a final decision. Most of these apps come with a free trial, so you can test them before making your final decision.
Which mindful eatings apps do you use? Let me know in the comments below.