Eating mindfully reduces emotional eating and abdominal fat

Posted on Mon, 27 Feb 12

By teaching people to eat mindfully and pay more attention to physical sensations such as hunger, fullness and cravings researchers have been able to reduce stress based emotional eating and abdominal fat independent of any dietary or exercise advice.

It is well known that for some people stress is a contributor to emotional eating and weight gain. Reasons for emotional eating include poor recognition of internal hunger cues and satiety signals and confusion between actual hunger and emotional arousal.

One approach that may reduce emotional eating and improve health is a mindfulness-based training which involves relaxation training such as yoga, meditation and exercises to increase experience in the present moment including recognition of physical sensations, thoughts and emotions as well as skills to develop adaptive responses to negative experiences.

Participants in the study underwent mindfulness training during nine 2.5-hour weekly classes and one 7-hour silent day of guided meditation practice after class 6.

The study investigators found that “the intervention was successful in increasing mindfulness and responsiveness to bodily sensations, reducing anxiety and eating in response to external food cues, and tended to reduce eating in response to emotions.”

Additionally the group receiving mindfulness training stabilized their body weight and in some cases tended towards weight loss (obese control group participants gained a mean of 1.7 kilograms during the same time period.). There was also a reduction in the stress hormone cortisol. 

“This proof of concept study suggests that mindfulness training shows promise for improving eating patterns and the cortisol awakening response, which may reduce abdominal fat over time” concluded the investigators. 

Reference:

Daubenmier J, Kristeller J, Hecht FM, Maninger N, Kuwata M, Jhaveri K, Lustig  RH, Kemeny M, Karan L, Epel E. Mindfulness Intervention for Stress Eating to Reduce Cortisol and Abdominal Fat among Overweight and Obese Women: An Exploratory Randomized Controlled Study. J Obes. 2011;2011:651936.