Let’s start at the beginning: meditation does not make you lose weight. Do not think that sitting on your legs bent and with a straight back and taking time to reflect for yourself that you will magically lose kilos, because that is not real. What meditation can do is help you change negative habits that make you gain weight or make it difficult for you to lose weight.
The foundation of meditation is paying attention to where you are, what you are doing, and how you are feeling. What they call focusing on the here and now. This work helps you to be more aware of the actions you carry out, which interferes with the creation of healthier habits, since you do not “eat for the sake of eating” but are aware of what you feel: hunger, sadness, boredom or apathy.
Aware of our feelings
Already in 2017 Tiffany Cruikshank published a book entitled Meditate on your weight in which she promised to help you lose weight by meditating. “Numerous studies have revealed that meditation helps us become more aware of feelings of hunger and of being full, and also of our ability to regulate what we eat and the amount of food we consume,” said the author.
According to Cruikshank, “Meditation reduces our irrepressible desire to eat unhealthy food and also the frequency with which we eat compulsively or to feel better emotionally. It also reduces high levels of cortisol – the stress hormone – and the toxic abdominal fat it generates. One study even revealed that attending meditation classes for eight weeks tripled the amount of weight lost in a group of older women, compared to those who did not use similar techniques.”
Meditation to deal with stress
In most cases when we suffer from stress we tend to overeat, which leads to weight gain. This is because our body interprets stress as if we were going hungry and pushes us to replace this loss of calories as soon as possible with foods very high in fat, sugar, salt… since we are conditioned by fluctuations in stress hormones and we it cries out for more energy.
If we face a stressful situation by meditating and repeating positive mantras, the level of cortisol and other stress hormones will be reduced, which will lead you to not give in to those emotional binges that do not respond to any physiological need of our body. . In addition, it also increases beneficial hormones such as DHEA and growth hormone, which produces lean body mass, and thyroid-stimulating hormone and prolactin, which strengthens metabolism.
It is about correcting counterproductive mental patterns through simple meditations and mental affirmations or mantras, in order to achieve goals such as losing weight. In this way, unhealthy patterns are corrected, reducing cravings and emotional hunger and thus favoring weight loss.
But come on, meditation is not a magic wand, with which you will lose weight by saying a simple spell. You also have to eat healthy and exercise, because miracles don’t exist. Of course, it can become an incredible complement in any slimming regimen by multiplying the effect of the diet.
