Weight Loss And The Benefits Of Mindfulness

The path to weight loss nirvana is paved with mindfulness.

Mindfulness is an essential skill that puts you on the path to permanent weight loss or “en-liten-ment”. Mindfulness is the practice of paying attention in the moment. It is only by centering your full attention in the moment that you can become aware of the content of your thoughts.

Those of us who eat compulsively, do so out of reactivity. Reactivity is when thoughts, emotions, and body sensations are channeled into behavior. Compulsive overeating and binge eating is a way to regulate emotions like boredom, anger, sadness etc.

Mindfulness gives you the awareness to make permanent changes in your eating patterns. It has been used successfully to stabilize eating behaviors in persons with binge eating disorder. Mindfulness allows you the spaciousness to become aware of your internal state. It is this internal state that drives your emotional eating. With mindfulness, you can tune in to see if you are hungry for food, or  if you're hungry for emotional nourishment.

Laboratory research on eating regulation shows that people who eat compulsively are generally less aware of hunger and saitety cues, including taste-specific satiety and feelings of fullness. My own experience with myself and clients is that we are simply lost in our thoughts and do not pay attention to our body sensations.

Mindfulness gives us the ability to see how our thoughts, emotions, and bodily feelings are influencing our behaviors. Until we become aware of this, we're on autopilot, mindlessness cruising through life, victimized by our own thoughts. Mindfulness allows us to develop self-nurturing behaviors. This skill is crucial if we want to end compulsive eating and achieve permanent weight loss, or "enlightenment."

Mindfulness hands us the keys to our inner world. This is where all thoughts, emotions, and behaviors arise. People who use food to regulate mood and emotions often have emotionally chaotic inner lives.

With mindfulness, you are given the awareness and opportunity to deconstruct your behavior and thinking, thus allowing you a choice as to how you want to react. Once you have access and familiarity to your inner world, you can begin to create an inner sanctuary - an internal state and place that is safe and nourishing - a place you will want to return again, and again. Once this nourishing place is established within you, food will begin to lose its stronghold in your life.

In a 1999 pilot study conducted by Jean Kristeller, PHD, a psychology professor at Indiana State University, and Brendan Hallett, a grad student, showed that mindfulness practice increased feelings of self acceptance and control around food, decreasing binges and reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression in just 6 weeks.

The meditation-based group intervention for Binge Eating Disorder (BED) involved 18 obese women, with binges decreasing in frequency, from 4.02 a week down to 1.57 a week. They also lessened in severity. Those who were still bingeing reported eating much less.

Kristeller and Ruth Quillian-Wolever, PHD, clinic director and clinical health psychologist of the Duke Center For Integrative Medicine, are now completing a randomized clinical trial based on the pilot study.  This study includes 150 men and women with bing-eating disorder who weigh on average 240 pounds.

If you want to end compulsive, emotional eating and make better choices that lead to permanent weight loss - try mindfulness practice. The path to weight loss nirvana is paved with mindfulness. With each mindful bite you get one step closer to enlightenment.

Note: As a person who has recovered from binge eating disorder, I can attest to the benefits of mindfulness. Mindfulness played a crucial role in my recovery; it has given my life the peace and richness that I enjoy today. Read my full story here!

The Marriage Of Neuroscience and Meditation

For years scientists thought the brain was born with a fixed set of neurons that steadily diminished with age. Discoveries in modern neuroscience show us that the brain is highly moldable and has the remarkable ability to grow neurons, new connections and pathways throughout the life cycle.
This is great news, as it is proof that we have the power to change and rewire our brain and behavior at any stage of life. The brains ability to form and establish new neural pathways is called neural plasticity.

Neuroscientists at several universities are currently conducting studies that merge neuroscience and the ancient Buddhist practice of mindfulness meditation. Numerous studies have shown that meditation has the ability to change the structure of the brain. When we become mindful and practice new behaviors, we are literally rewiring our brains. 

There is a large body of growing scientific evidence that meditation is good for what ails us. We are too busy for own good! The ancient art of practicing stillness is what balances and nourishes the mind. There is wisdom in the stillness.

Most people have the impression that meditation is sitting still for hours in a lotus positition chanting OM, but meditation is really about getting still and focusing the mind. The benefits of mindfulness are experienced quickly, (in as little as 5 days) and improvements are being shown in as little as 10 minutes a day. 20 minutes daily seems to be required to make major changes to the brain. This is good news, as people have so little time.

There are many ways to experience meditation and stillness. The secret is to find the method that best suits your personality and style. Moving types of meditation are excellent for people who have particularly fast moving and or chaotic minds. My particular favorite is mindful walking. Yoga, swimming, running, and weight lifting are other active ways to the still the mind and show the same benefits of mindfulness training.

Dancing, chanting, or focusing on the breath, bodily sensations or a particular object like a candle, are other ways to meditate.  Creative hobbies, arts and crafts like painting, knitting, collage, crochet, or beading are creative ways to meditate. To bead means "to pray."

Insight meditation, a technique that involves observing the contents of one's thoughts in a detached and nonjudgemental manner, is an excellent way to develop self awareness and glean insight into the inner workings of one's mind.

When one enters a deep state of relaxation and loses one's self in the meditative process, it is called "entering the flow state." This state or zone is the healing state of awareness that connects us to the flow of life.

Once you are practiced at becoming still and centered, your whole life becomes a meditation, with every experience an invitation to become fully present. Life then takes on an incredible richness, as you live your bliss and flow.

Numerous studies in the field of positive psychology conducted on happiness show that people who are the healthiest and happiest spend most of their lives in this state. The secret to happiness turns out be full engagement with the joy and dance of life. It is proof that losing our small self to the flow of life connects us to our larger Self, the Self that connects us all.

Neuroscientists are simply confirming what we zen masters have known all along. What we focus our attention on grows. Now that we know this, it is never too late too late to grow and develop a better brain.

The Anatomy Of A Habit

The definition of the word “habit” is a pattern of behavior acquired through frequent repetition. Most of human behavior is habitual. It takes little or no awareness on your part. These habitual behaviors are a strongly established neural pathways in your brain. They are like well-worn grooves in a record. Until new, stronger neural pathways or habits are established, your original habit will be your standard default position or behavior. It is like a software program that is stored in your brain.

This is why emotional eating is a fallback position in times of stress. The software program (habit) begins to play automatically when the system (your brain) is stressed. This is why clients report that they can be doing great with new eating behaviors and then all of a sudden it's like a switch has been flipped and they are off and running into a binge. It is also why addicts are always at the highest risk for relapse in times of stress.

In order to break this habit, one must first become aware of it, which requires mindful awareness. Mindfulness is the foundation for permanent change. As you become more mindful, you are then able to choose healthier behaviors. Then, as you practice new behaviors through consistent repetition, you establish or lay down new behavioral tracks and grow new neural pathways in the brain. By doing this, you are literally rewiring your brain.

Over time, you will starve the original neural pathways and the newer ones will become stronger. Eventually, the new habits and behaviors will become as automatic as the old ones currently are. They become your "new normal."

Changing life long patterns around food and weight will not happen overnight. The longer emotional eating has had a hold in your life, the longer it will take to replace that behavior. Healing from emotional eating is a process and a journey. It is best to approach it with an attitude of self-acceptance, curiosity, openness and non-judgement.

These behaviors are not evidence of lack of will power, defectiveness or weakness. They are simply long entrenched habits that are no longer serving you well. Mindfulness brings a peaceful awareness that each moment is another chance to get it right.  Yes, enlightenment happens one moment at a time. The time for enlightenment is now.

Putting The Problem In Focus

In working with many clients over the years, I have observed what I believe are many cases of undiagnosed attention deficits and disorders. Now, I am not a doctor or even a therapist, but based on these observations it is my personal opinion and theory that undiagnosed ADD, obessive compulsive disorder, and or undiagnosed aspergers syndrome are responsible for many cases of obesity and eating disorders.

This was certainly true in my own eating disorder; I had an undiagnosed case of ADD with generalized anxiety disorder, and some obsessive compulsive traits thrown in for good measure. This is why it is easy for me to see the same patterns in my clients.

Most people think ADD only affects hyperactive boys and is something they outgrow, but ADD looks very different in girls and women, is often undiagnosed and often doesn't include hyperactivity. It can show up in the form of shyness and passivity, social and emotional immaturity, anxiety and sensory overload, isolating, daydreaming and obsessive thinking, procrastination, lack of focus and motivation, feeling scattered and overwhelmed, impulsivity and irritability, mental meltdowns, and the ability to hyperfocus on details (can't see the forest through the trees) to the exclusion of most everything else.

People with these disorders are interest driven and can become hyperfocused, fixated and obsessed with food, and or dieting and food related rituals. Food can become their special interest of choice, often with an entire lifestyle revolving around it. They might become gourmet foodies, nutritionists, fad dieters, juicers, vegans, raw foodists, chefs, and or vegetarians. In their more extreme form they become anorexics.

Food becomes a coping tool for dealing with a life that is overwhelming and overstimulating for them. It gives them a sense of much needed control and comfort. These people are often anxiety prone, hypersensitive and find change extremely difficult. They can be prone to rigidity, perfectionism, and a love of sameness and routine, and once bad habits are established, it is incredibly hard to undo them. They often become negatively focused, with all their energy focused on the problem, not on the solution.

People with these disorders often have minds that are 10-20 steps ahead of them. They want to go from A to Z without the steps in between. They have a hard time integrating what they know. They are full of facts and book knowledge, but find it extremely diffcult to get that knowledge out of their heads and into action. It is because they suffer deficits in executive function which is absolutely necessary for goal formation and the ability to carry goals out.

Change can be extremely hard for people with these disorders. It brings up much fear, sabotage and resistance. This leads to much frustration, lack of self trust and despair. Brain imaging scans show that for many people, change triggers fear in the amygdala, a tiny spot in the most primitive (reptilian) part of the brain that is responsible for fear.

When you are in a state of fear, it is almost impossible to learn new behaviors. Fear prevents the brain from laying down new tracks of information. This is the biological basis and reason why slow change is the best change.

Many people with attentional deficits become chronic contemplators and underachievers who suffer from depression, apathy and inertia because they have lost the belief that they are capable of change.

In my case, I often suffered from information and sensory overload, and would become overwhelmed by change because I couldn't see how to break down change into manageable steps. I wanted to do everything all at once! Mindfulness helped me to focus, and then to integrate all my knowledge.

I began to be much more effective in the world, as I was able to see how to break down complex tasks and then execute them. Before I became the mindful person I am today, I sometimes felt like a hamster spinning on a wheel, going nowhere fast!

Studies conducted by neuroscientists show that meditation and the art of focusing can bring stronger awareness and executive function in just 8 weeks. Studies conducted by Lidia Zylowska, UCLA Psychology Professor and neuroscientist who studies mindfulness, showed that mindfulness improved mental focus and executive function in 24 adults and 8 teens with ADD in 8 weeks. Her work was published in The Journal Of Attention Disorders in May 2008.

Neuroscientist Amir Raz at McGil University and Torkel Klingberg, Swedish neuroscientist and creator of Robomemo, an attention training computer program, are both proponents of attentional training. They are showing that increases in focus and gains in executive function happen
very quickly (as little as 5 days) with attentional training.

I hope to show with this research, and with my own life's experience and work, that what we focus our attention on matters. If you suffer from overeating, weight and food obsessions, there are biological, genetic, as well as psychological reasons for your behavior.

The good news is that you do not have to be victimized by these any longer. It is truly possible to transcend your biological and physiological destiny. You have the power to rewire and build a better brain, body and life for yourself. As an eating disorder survivor and thriver, I am proof of this.

Your brain is far more powerful than you know. You haven't even begun to tap into it's awe inspiring power. Modern neuroscience is proving what the spiritual masters have known all along - meditation is the science and art of building your brain.

My program, The Weight Loss Master's Club is designed to shift your focus away from food and weight, and into the joy of life. It's core component is mindfulness based behavioral change.

Mindful awareness is the key to a focused, slimmer and balanced life. You now possess the key to your mind, body and freedom. Are you ready to use it?

Treat yourself to the gift of the present.

Join The Weight Loss Master's Club!

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Interested in weight loss or emotional eating coaching? Contact Catherine for a free consultation!