Can Mindful Eating help me lose weight?
Mindful Eating. It’s marketed as a weight loss system,
all the time. Is this what it is?
Will I lose weight with Mindful Eating?
I get it. Menopause or perimenopause hits, and we feel unhappy about our body changes. It’s a REALLY hard transition to go through for many of us.
You are told that if you just ate “mindfully” you would be healthier … and lose weight.
What does that really mean?
Mindful eating is a practice that helps you pay attention to your experiences, around food, in the MOMENT.
It helps you tune in to thoughts, feelings, cravings, impulses and body signals, WITHOUT judgement.
It is rooted in Buddhism and shares similarities to Intuitive Eating. The are not the same. And neither of them should be used as DIETS.
You don’t have to be a Buddhist to practice Mindful Eating:)
And whether you are looking to learn Mindful Eating or Intuitive Eating, NEITHER practice is meant to use portion control, food restriction, or calorie counting.
Your size and weight are not part of either practice because … they just don’t factor in.
It’s all about alleviating your suffering around food, and tuning in to what your body needs: emotionally, physically and spiritually.
Mindful Eating is NOT:
advice to use the hunger and fullness concept as a RULE.
creating “Mindful Portions.”
looking at calories or logging on a fitness app
If you are using one of these “methods” wrapped around mindful eating, well … you’re dieting, you are not eating mindfully.
Nor are you addressing your relationship to food.
Your food relationship is built on internal and external messages, your feelings about your body and self, and early life adversity, to name a few things.
When we are Menopausal with a capitol M, and are struggling with the midlife belly, we are really struggling with midlife body image.
We google, “Will Mindful Eating help me lose weight?” and we are met with:
Pay attention to your food, you will eat less.
Stop judging yourself (paired with a pic of a younger body, which may lead you to judge yourself even more).
Use all your senses, so you feel satisfied, and stay on track.
Be present. Ok, I have NO arguments with this one!
But this?
“Find sustainable weight loss with mindful eating.”
Mindful eating is not ABOUT WEIGHT LOSS.
It is about PRESENCE & RELATIONSHIP.
But, you say, I don’t feel comfortable in my body!
I used to feel different/better/happier.
And a lot of this may be tied to your size.
And there is more to unpack there.
I can see why people turn to Mindful Eating as a promise of weight loss. And when you adopt the practice of Eating Mindfully, or Eating Intuitively, you MAY lose weight. And you may not.
Your body may have been holding on to weight for years because it has been deprived. Diets don’t tell you THAT part.
Or that they are unsustainable for 95% of the population, long term.
Here is an excerpt from this article if you are looking for the science behind diet failures.
Trigger warning: overw*ght and O words used.
As far as diets go …
“This approach reliably induces short term weight loss, but the majority of individuals are unable to maintain weight loss over the long term and do not achieve the putative benefits of improved morbidity and mortality.”
Linda (Lindo) Bacon & Lucy Aphramour, Nutrition Journal
Here’s what trying Mindful Eating CAN do for you:
create satisfaction with eating, on a regular basis.
create awareness and acceptance of where you are right now.
create a kind and compassionate decision making process on what health practices for for YOU.
create the ability to choose what’s right for you, based on what you know about you, while you consciously decipher nutrition information.
Mindful Eating is an evidence based framework that allows you to let your body talk, and honour what it says.
However, if you are being told, that Mindful Eating or even Intuitive Eating, will help you lose weight, you are not being presented with the FULL and SUSTAINABLE spectrum of these practices.
You aren’t given the TRUTH.
These practices have been grabbed by diet culture, and manipulated. We are manipulated daily.
We have been manipulated into thinking we never measure up, ALL OUR LIVES it seems.
“Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.”
Ready to explore your cravings and food relationship?
You might like The Cravings Consultation.
You get to bring your chocolate, or your chips, to our session.
We’ll break down your craving, in the moment, to help your food relationship.
What will it be, chocolate, chips or maybe a taco?
