Stress eating and mindless snacking got you down? Here’s how to break the cycle.

Oh, and in case you’re put off by the sound of meditation … you might just want to read this bit of information first. In 1994, the National Institute of Health began a research programme entitled ‘The National Weight Control Registry’ or ‘NWCR’. It was set up to investigate and identify the common characteristics of people who successfully lose weight and keep it off. According to published research on this group, the successful participants share many common behaviours. To begin with, they eat a low-calorie, low-fat diet, and have breakfast almost every day. They also have a high level of physical activity, exercising (often walking) for almost one hour a day. So far so normal. However, what may surprise you is that ‘almost everyone’ who successfully lost weight and kept it off, incorporated, and I quote, ‘a meditative element’ into their lives. This was typically to help control stress and cravings, to enhance mood, or to improve quality of sleep: all key factors in successful weight loss.

Although meditation traditions vary greatly, the one thing that can be said of pretty much all meditation techniques is that they are a subtle, yet deliberate, attempt to increase calm on the one hand and clarity on the other. Ask yourself, how much calm do you have in your life? And how much calm do you have around food? How much clarity do you have in your life? And how much clarity do you have about why you eat the way you eat? I’m assuming that you will almost certainly want to develop more of both – after all, who wouldn’t want more calm and clarity in their life? Especially if the absence of one or the other (or both) is causing you to make bad choices around food. So, rather than think of meditation as some kind of religious journey or mystical experience (unless that’s your thing, of course), in this context it’s useful to think of meditation as a way of providing the most conducive conditions possible for learning the technique of mindfulness, and for getting some calm and clarity into your life.

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