Can Mindfulness Stop You From Overeating?
Mindfulness and meditation are increasingly recommended for managing overeating or disordered eating behaviors. Multiple analyses of various studies over time confirm their usefulness in managing eating behaviors and, as a result, in potential weight loss.
The journal Eating Behaviors performed a review of study results and found that both meditation and mindfulness practices positively affect eating behaviors.
In “Mindfulness meditation as an intervention for binge eating, emotional eating, and weight loss: A systematic review,” researchers found that while the practices provide significant benefits, they do not always result in weight loss.
The researchers summed it up this way: “Mindfulness training decreases binge eating across a variety of samples. It reduces emotional reactivity for individuals engaging in this behavior. Mindfulness meditation does not consistently produce significant weight loss.”
In regard to the latter finding, two key words are important: consistently and significant weight loss. That is not to say, however, that they do not provide any benefits in these areas—only that the studies showed less of a clear pattern when it came to weight loss given the limited time frames of the studies.
Decreasing binging and reducing emotional eating over longer time frames will likely lead to positive outcomes for weight control.
Indeed, the researchers point out that “additional research is warranted to determine comparative effectiveness and long-term effects of mindfulness training.”
Researchers reported their analyses of findings from “randomized-controlled trials(RCTs)” of mindfulness-based interventions in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. In the article, “Effects of Mindfulness-Based Intervention on the Treatment of Problematic Eating Behaviors: A Systematic Review,” they report that “in the majority of included studies, participants in mindfulness-based intervention groups showed significant reduction in emotional eating, external eating, binge eating, and weight and shape concern.
Findings also suggest that increasing mindful awareness of internal experiences and automatic patterns could be effective for the improvement of self-acceptance and emotional regulation, thereby reducing the problematic eating behaviors.”
In other words, mindfulness-based programs (including meditation) work to reduce stress around eating. The researchers point out that since, “problematic eating behaviors have been identified as a leading cause of the spread of obesity,” mindfulness practices offer significant promise for those suffering from disordered eating habits and shows great promise in long-term weight-loss (again, the papers do not report on long-term weight loss as they were limited by time and scope of the reported studies).
In the Journal of Treatment and Prevention of Eating Disorder, researchers focused primarily on the effects of mindfulness practices on the “treatment of eating disorders.”
Despite the fact that “trial qualities were variable and sample sizes were small,” their analyses found “evidence supporting the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions to the treatment of eating disorders” and that such practices remain “a promising approach worthy of further research.”
Positive and encouraging results appear consistent throughout various studies and multiple analyses.
One study looked at these practices prompted by text messaging prompts for mindfulness. In “Delivering Mindfulness-Based Interventions of Insomnia, Pain, and Dysfunctional Eating Through a Text Messaging App: Three Randomized Controlled Trials Investing the Effectiveness and Mediating Mechanisms,” published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, the researchers designed and evaluated text-prompted mindfulness practices in “three randomized controlled trials.”
Participants included people with “distress related to insomnia, pain, or dysregulated eating.” Three-hundred-and-fifty-one individuals participated in the control group for dysregulated eating.
“Participants experienced 21 days of intervention through WhatsApp Messenger” and self-reported results at one, two, and three month follow-ups.
For all three groups, including disordered eating, the intervention showed “significant improvement” in the short and longer-term. At the three-month follow-up for the dysregulated eating group, assessments showed “significant indirect effects on uncontrolled eating and emotional eating.”
“These three studies converged and provided empirical evidence that mindfulness-based interventions delivered through text-messaging are effective in improving distress related to sleep, pain, and dysregulated eating.” It follows that lessening “distress” levels related to eating could result in weight loss over time.
The Journal of Behavioral Medicine also reports positive findings in its article, “Mindfulness moderates daily stress and comfort food snacking linkages: a multilevel examination.”
Researchers had participants use an “11-day daily diary” to examine “multilevel linkages between daily stress appraisals and comfort food eating in undergraduates.”
Mindfulness, unsurprisingly, moderated the effects of stress.
“Results illustrate that chronic stress exposure and acute stress reactivity” impact eating behavior. They conclude that “mindfulness and chronic stress may be key intervention targets for non-clinical groups at risk for unhealthy eating.”
While none of these studies looked at how mindfulness-based interventions directly affect weight loss, it is clear they have a very positive effect on the stressors related to weight issues and/or disordered eating. As such, all of the researchers conclude that that it offers great potential in this area.
Studies cited:
Katterman, S. N., Kleinman, B. M., Hood, M. M., Nackers, L. M., & Corsica, J. A. (2014). Mindfulness meditation as an intervention for binge eating, emotional eating, and weight loss: a systematic review. Eating behaviors, 15(2), 197–204. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eatbeh.2014.01.005
Yu, J., Song, P., Zhang, Y., & Wei, Z. (2020). Effects of Mindfulness-Based Intervention on the Treatment of Problematic Eating Behaviors: A Systematic Review. Journal of alternative and complementary medicine (New York, N.Y.), 26(8), 666–679. https://doi.org/10.1089/acm.2019.0163
Wanden-Berghe, R. G., Sanz-Valero, J., & Wanden-Berghe, C. (2011). The application of mindfulness to eating disorders treatment: a systematic review. Eating disorders, 19(1), 34–48. https://doi.org/10.1080/10640266.2011.533604
Hussain, M., Egan, H., Keyte, R., Strachan, R., Tahrani, A. A., & Mantzios, M. (2022). Exploring the association between self-compassion, mindfulness and mindful eating with eating behaviours amongst patients with obesity. Nutrition and health, 2601060221094671. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/02601060221094671
Li, A. C., Wong, K. K., Chio, F. H., Mak, W. W., & Poon, L. W. (2022). Delivering Mindfulness-Based Interventions for Insomnia, Pain, and Dysfunctional Eating Through a Text Messaging App: Three Randomized Controlled Trials Investigating the Effectiveness and Mediating Mechanisms. Journal of medical Internet research, 24(5), e30073. https://doi.org/10.2196/30073
Finkelstein-Fox, L., Gnall, K. E., & Park, C. L. (2020). Mindfulness moderates daily stress and comfort food snacking linkages: a multilevel examination. Journal of behavioral medicine, 43(6), 1062–1068. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-020-00164-z