Meditation for Weight Loss: Can it Help?
Studies are showing that meditation can help many aspects of physical and emotional health…but does it help with weight loss and weight management?
The short answer is yes, but it’s not because meditation helps you count calories more accurately or helps you run faster. We’ll explore weight loss from the broadest perspective, and you’ll quickly see how the benefits of meditation for long-term weight loss can be achieved effortlessly through practicing Vedic Meditation.
There’s a reason we hear the term “weight loss journey” so frequently these days. Managing weight and weight loss takes twists and turns, and oftentimes things that worked once for weight loss stop working after a little while. Confused and frustrated, we try tactic after tactic and can sometimes feel like what works for one person (or influencer) just doesn’t work for us. Because of this, we go down a long – and expensive – road to attempting to feel our best.
This may be why you’ve stumbled upon an article about meditation for weight loss.
The good news is the approach to your health doesn’t have to be a complicated one. Meditation is one of the best things you can add to your daily routine to support you on your weight loss journey. Let’s dive deeper into the correlation between meditation and weight loss and look at some of the ways we can target the benefits of meditation for fat loss and reaching your ideal weight.
VEDIC MEDITATION REDUCES STRESS (WHICH HELPS REDUCE WEIGHT)
One of the main barriers to losing weight is stress and stress accumulation. According to Pamela Peeke, MD, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Maryland, cortisol, the “stress hormone,” rises during tense times, which can lead to overeating, cravings, and overindulgence when we experience acute fight or flight responses in our day.
If your day is anything like the average human in the high-demand world we live in, we may be engaging in a fight or flight response multiple times a day. This activates the stress hormone regularly, which can lead to sustained periods of turning to foods as a comforting response to a pressure-filled life.
At the core of it all, stress accumulation creates a massive imbalance in our bodies, which causes each of us to respond to the imbalance in compensatory ways. This means a decreased motivation to move our bodies in exercise and emotional compensation through overeating for many of us. Both of these imbalances can make it more challenging for us to lose weight.
Contrary to popular belief, stress is not a thing, place, or person. Stress is an innate response we create when we have less rest in our bodies to meet the demands of our day. And while it may seem like stress is a “one and done” phenomenon in life, when we create stress in the body, we also store the stress deep within our bodies.
As the stress begins to accumulate in our physiologies, we often find ourselves falling back on old habits during previously, similar stress-filled times. You may be finding yourself feeling a lack of motivation for physical exercise or movement, or reaching for foods when there are no hunger sensations, simply because the stress accumulation has habituated this behavior, and continues to reinforce it each time stresses are re-triggered.
One of the main stress triggers in every weight loss journey? The stress and frustration of the journey itself. Without a proper stress-releasing technique, we find that the journey of weight loss can itself create more and more stress in the body, and create a vicious cycle emotionally and physically.
This is where meditation for weight loss is key. Where we see stress creating an imbalance in the body, Vedic Meditation brings those imbalances back to balance. In this way, meditation and weight loss go hand in hand.
A recent article shared thirteen helpful tips on weight loss including improving gut health, better sleep, and hormonal balance, to name a few. We can support all of these health initiatives by bringing our bodies back into balance through the practice of Vedic Meditation.
In our regular twice-daily practice of Vedic Meditation, we rest the body so deeply that stress and stress accumulation are released reliably and regularly. With less stress in the body, balance and orderliness return quickly. And, for many who have historically struggled with their weight, these Vedic Meditation techniques for weight loss will allow you to more easily find that balance in their health journey.
MEDITATION ELIMINATES DISTRACTION (AND DISTRACTIVE EATING)
When we rest the body deeply through Vedic Meditation, we find ourselves more and more grounded in the present moment and feel more and more fulfillment as our baseline experience of life. As we bring these feelings of fulfillment into our lives, we more easily discover what we need from moment to moment and act in a way that is most aligned for us.
This natural awareness, cultivated through Vedic Meditation, can help those who struggle with weight loss make better decisions about what we eat, how we eat it, when we eat, and why we eat. The less stress we carry in our physiology as a result of our meditation practice, the more clarity and confidence we gain in making moment-to-moment decisions to do with our health.
We know that establishing a regular practice of meditation is an investment in our health. This extends to our eating and exercise habits. This could look like making better choices when it comes to our food, or it might appear as an aversion to foods that are not life-supporting.
Once we’ve established our meditation practice and can regularly access our fulfillment state, we realize we can tune into the best exercise that works for us, for the seasons, and for our stage of life. We will also discover that we won’t choose NOT to exercise due to fatigue and stress and our need to eat due to stress diminishes too. Without stress impeding our progress, we can easily attune to our body’s needs and make the progress we desire with more ease and efficiency.
Nutritionist Jessica Sepel writes, “Once we have the skills in place to find happiness and psychological well-being, healthy mindful eating habits (and a healthy weight) will follow easily.” Vedic Meditation will help get us there, quickly.
MEDITATION BUILDS BASELINE HAPPINESS (AND REMOVES GUILT AND SHAME AROUND WEIGHT LOSS)
Vedic Meditation helps us access a state of deep interconnectedness. We cultivate a sense of happiness that is not dependent on the numbers on a scale or how our bodies compare to those we see on social media.
Through our meditation practice, we find our baseline happiness increasing and our inner fulfillment is revealed and stabilized. Naturally, this begins to have an effect on what our definition of an “ideal” body is, and moreover what we value and why we value it. As we become more easeful in our minds, we become more comfortable in our bodies.
This allows them to function in the best way possible. When we step into weight loss not as a pressure-filled idea, we can then approach it as a way to find our optimal body composition to feel our best.
When working from the foundation of bliss, we no longer do things to look for happiness on the other side of hitting a number on the scale or looking a certain way. This doesn’t mean we won’t have any weight loss goals. It simply means that we do not seek them from a place of desperation, as in, “If I could just weigh “X” amount, I would be happy.”
When we practice Vedic Meditation, we embody the idea that “happiness is an inside job,” regardless of our body’s current shape of the day or the size of the jeans we’re wearing. When we let go of rigid attachment to certain outcomes and timings in our weight loss journey, what actually happens is that we end up enjoying the benefits faster and with less effort.
Importantly, as we align ourselves with our inner nature of happiness, the guilt and shame around our weight loss journey (and the stress we build as a result of these negative emotions!) begin to fade into the distance. This is what sets our bodies up perfectly to actually achieve our optimal health goals.
SO, IS MEDITATION HELPFUL FOR WEIGHT LOSS?
Vedic Meditation is a wonderful addition to everyone’s health and weight loss journey. Vedic Meditation is a simple 20-minute twice-daily practice.
This technique allows us to easily and effortlessly metabolize stress and perform in a more and more optimal manner in our daily lives. Every day that you are meditating, you are releasing more stress than you can possibly take on in a day. This brings the body into a more and more balanced state each and every day. You’ll soon find that weight loss won’t be a “struggle” anymore, living in tune with your body will be the baseline and everything else begins to fall into place.
Put simply, meditation is perhaps the most effective way to not only relieve stress and sleep better – huge components in managing our weight – but also the best way to quickly discover your body’s individual needs and begin moving in that direction. It will save you the headache of continued investigation into various fad diets, workout routines, and supplements, saving you time and money which can be used in other areas of your life.
A MYRIAD OF BENEFITS
When we use Vedic Meditation as a foundational practice, anything that you decide to do will work better because you will not be making decisions from a place of stress or vulnerability. When we nourish the body with rest, we make decisions from a place of groundedness and confidence that can only be accessed individually and internally.
Whether you begin practicing meditation for weight loss, implementing new exercise regimens, or perhaps you simply want more energy throughout the day and are hoping to increase your longevity, all of these goals are better attained with an energized, well-rested physiology, vs. a stressed, tired, and unhappy one. What we are not suggesting is a guided meditation for weight loss specifically, but an all-encompassing approach that will improve your health with each day that you practice.
Ready to learn to meditate and achieve your weight loss goals? Schedule a free intro talk to learn more.
