Mindfulness and Weight Loss

At the Pritikin Longevity Center, healthy weight loss is an important component to achieving long-term health goals for our guests. Healthy diets and nutritional choices, along with physical activity, are longstanding methods of weight control. But other less-practiced remedies exist for consideration. A key one is mindfulness.

Mindfulness and Weight Loss

Mindfulness is all about how one’s mood, outlook, and ability to stay mindfully calm in the present moment can prevent unwanted weight gain and benefit overall health.

Being mindful includes the ability to control our reactions to ongoing, and often stressful, life events. Most would agree that we spend far too much time worrying about what has already happened in the past or what we fear may happen in the future. While this response is an automatic reaction based on subconscious, limiting beliefs accumulated through life experience, many don’t realize the huge impact that stress has on our health and even on our weight.

Belly-Fat Creator

Stress triggers the body’s release of the hormone, cortisol. The intended role of this hormone is a good one—to protect the body from a perceived impending danger—as signaled by a state of stress. Unfortunately, it is released whether a real physical danger exists or not. When too often we create the level of stress that unleashes the “fight or flight” syndrome’ for our protection, this hormone becomes a registered belly-fat creator, and over time distributes extra layers of fat around our middle to protect our organs from some perceived danger.

If we were able to practice present-moment awareness more often, we could control our thoughts and reduce unnecessary stress. One benefit is that the faulty need for cortisol production would be reduced. How we allow our minds to deal with the stress-causing frustrations of life affects not only unwanted pounds showing up on our bodies, but ultimately, it affects our overall health and the quality of our lives, as well. This worked well for cavemen facing menacing saber-toothed tigers in their hunt for food. But today, this process is actually dangerous to our health because it surrounds our organs with stubborn visceral fat that can prevent proper functioning of our vital processes. With continued stress from the many “tigers” we have to slay daily and overuse of this protective mechanism, our immune system is weakened, rendering it less effective in fighting real dangers to our health, like cancer and other chronic diseases.

Mindfulness and Weight Loss | Changing How We Think

When we learn to make a practice of restricting our thoughts to what we can and need to actually control in the moment, we are able to maintain an equilibrium of emotions that eliminates unnecessary stress and its effect on our bodies. This is not to suggest that we ignore the human condition and realities of life—it is simply that we adopt better ways to manage those issues that is important. The good news is that this can be achieved. According to an article in Psychology Today by psychotherapist, Melanie Greenberg, an expert in mindfulness, “neuroscientists have confirmed that our mind is constantly rewiring and reconditioning itself.” What that means is—we can change the way we think!

Mindfulness and Weight Loss | Using Meditation

The book How To Wake Up by Toni Bernhard, a Buddhist-inspired author, gives us insights and tools to practice self-compassion and mindfulness. Through the use of meditation and other mind-body connection tools, mindfulness becomes an achievable means of preventing weight gain, while improving overall health and longevity.

At Pritikin, we already have many tools in place to assist you on your journey toward a more mindful state of being and a healthier, fuller life of joy. Come, join us!