How Meditation and Mindfulness can help you lose weight

You might be wondering what meditation has to do with weight loss. Read to see out how meditation and mindfulness can help you lose weight.

In the west, we view the body as a separate entity from the mind; therefore, when we talk about losing weight, we overlook the mind and body connection and discuss only half of the picture.

Our advice; spend hours in the gym, eat a salad instead of fries, control your food portions, and count calories.

Although it works, some of us still struggle to find a suitable diet for our bodies that won’t leave us with cravings and guilt if we give in.

We also don’t want losing weight to feel like a struggle.

In short, we want a healthy relationship with food, a diet that works, to lose weight and keep it off.

Half of the work is on the body; the other half is on the mind; meditation and Mindfulness help bridge the two gaps together so that losing weight becomes a natural side effect.

For us to bridge the two gaps, let’s first understand why we eat in the first place.

Why Do We Eat?

The answer seems obvious; to give our bodies the energy, to survive and perform our daily activities with ease.

It sounds pretty simple, but our weight problems prove that the answer is not so obvious.

Mainstream media has conditioned us to make the taste more important than the body’s fuel and health.

We may also overeat because of stress, boredom, or a lack of good quality sleep, which interferes with the hormones that control hunger and appetite.

If the primary function of food is to fuel energy and support health, we should only be eating when we feel hungry, and taste should be a bonus to healthy eating.

Stress and Emotional Eating

Stress eating means you eat based on your emotions instead of letting your body dictate how much or when you should eat.

It includes; binge eating when you feel stressed, eating to avoid thinking about problems or to avoid the action required to solve them.

I know from experience that strong emotions can be overwhelming.

When there is no healthy practice to reduce the intensity of the emotions, we use comfort food to dull feelings.

How Meditation Helps with Weight Loss

Meditation helps reduce stress and improve sleep, all of which are connected to weight management.

Meditation can take the place of comfort foods while also improving sleep.

A good night’s sleep helps stabilizes hormones that control hunger and appetite.

According to a 2017 meta-analysis, Meditation helped participants reduce cortisol and C-reactive protein levels, all of which are related to stress and depression.

Additionally, the same 2017 review of 19 different studies found that typical weight loss methods (exercise and diet) work in the short term but fail in the long run.

In the study, participants gained back the weight after the programs ended.

Emotionally, mindful Meditation is the most helpful intervention for squashing emotional eating and binge eating, according to a 2014 review of 14 different studies.

Remember the mind and body connection? Fixing the body and ignoring the mind, in the long run, leaves room for you to gain all the weight back.

Mindful Eating

Daily Meditation makes it easy to bring mindfulness to your day-to-day activities; this includes eating.

Mindful eating means being present while you eat.

It means paying attention to the taste of the food, how it makes you feel, taking cues when you are hungry to eat vs. when you are satisfied to stop eating.

For example, some people swear by a vegan diet; I tried it and lost way too much weight.

So, I experimented by adding fish to the diet, and my weight stabilized.

I listened to my body and adjusted my diet to suit its needs.

That’s what mindful eating can help you do; by paying attention and listening to what your body needs,  you get to eat what is right for you instead of the latest diet.

In short, Meditation makes us mindful of what we eat and fixes mental and emotional issues related to food.

Remember 

• Losing weight should not be the goal; instead of balancing the mind and body and building a healthy relationship with food should be the goal. Losing weight will come naturally as a side effect.

P.S. If you are having trouble getting a goodnight sleep, consider signing up for our free sleep guide below.

It has everything you need to improve your sleep, including a sleep tracker and selfcare journal to help you carb those late night thoughts.