The Role of Meditation in Weight Loss

Meditation can play a vital role in weight loss and improve an overweight or obese person’s ability to achieve weight-reduction goals.

Recent studies indicate that approximately 70% of the U.S. population is either overweight or obese (body mass index [BMI] ≥ 25.0 kg/m²), with 40% classified as obese (BMI ≥ 30.0 kg/m²).¹ What we are witnessing is an unprecedented public health epidemic.

Sad to say, only a small percentage of these people will ever achieve sustainable weight loss, somewhere between 1% and 4%.² Naturally, this raises questions as to the methods of the victorious few. How and why do they succeed where so many others cannot?

In my years of working with such clients, I’ve observed time and again that success has more to do with the person’s mind state than any other single factor. I’ve also learned that the quality of this mind state is subject to positive transformation through particular forms of meditation. In other words, it’s not the specific nutritional regimen or exercise modality that determines success. It’s the quality of mind that makes the difference.

The Irrepressible Power of Stopping

For starters, when someone undertakes a daily meditation practice, it creates space in their life for self-care. Meditation cultivates a calming, relaxing, and restorative inner atmosphere where healing can occur. Many meditation modalities achieve this end including breath-based meditation, sensory awareness, emotional attunement, visualization, moving meditation, mantra recitation, and various somatic meditations.

In lay terms, regular meditation practice helps people lighten up and take things easier. This proves vital because, inevitably, overweight and obese people feel chronically anxious and emotionally insecure, constantly running, perpetually overwhelmed by forces that seem beyond their control. Stopping proves to be a catalyst for them to stop whipping themselves and to instead become their own best friend. This shift is essential because self-deprecation and shame often haunt the overweight person—and are totally counterproductive. The stopping power of meditation helps to quiet these dark, unconscious inner voices and replace them with self-compassion.

Mindfulness Practice Nurtures Clarity and Insight

Meditation cultivates mindfulness, the practice of tuning in with greater sensitivity and awareness to what is arising here and now in one’s body, emotions, mind, and environment. Mindfulness practice extends to many areas of life that impact the two prime forces in weight loss: energy consumption (how many calories one eats) and energy expenditure (how many calories one burns through physical activity).

1. Mindful Eating

As mindfulness from meditation practice seeps into people’s everyday life, they start noticing the what, where, when, how, and why of their eating behaviors—and see them without judgment. At a basic level, mindful eating involves thoroughly chewing and fully tasting food, not wolfing it down. When people eat slower, they taste more and eat less. Mindfulness also helps a person become aware of mental and emotional patterns that trigger their unwise food choices and eating habits.

2. Mindfulness of Emotions

Anxiety and depression are powerful forces that drive compulsive eating behaviors and overeating. When people see these moods as they arise, without being reactive, they find ways to deal with this emotional energy more directly. This represents real growth, since eating to manage one’s emotions is a short-lived solution.

3. Mindfulness of Energy

Many things in this world are downright toxic, a total drain on a person’s energy and purity. Mindfulness gives them the awareness and will power to lock these forces out. There are unwholesome people out there, people who only seem to drag others down. Unfortunately, some are family members and so-called friends. There are various forms of media such as TV shows, books, films, and social media that only appeal to people’s darker side. Mindfulness helps a person to see these people and things for what they are, and to have the courage and conviction to avoid their toxic energy.

Mindfulness also improves one’s control of impulsive behavior, the product of misguided operant conditioning. Such impulses are forms of habit energy that can be so evasive as to fly under the radar of awareness. Through meditation, overweight and obese people learn to stay present with their bodily experience rather than spinning off in their heads. They become detached observers of what’s really happening inside their bodies, emotions, and minds and learn to be watchful without reacting.

Meditation also develops a person’s sense of structure, the inner awareness that creates order, discipline, and regimen in their life. They become more likely to schedule, plan, and organize. Chaos has a hard time getting a foothold in a mindful person’s life. I’ve noticed that people who develop regular meditation practices tend to have neater and cleaner homes and rooms. This stands to reason, because a person’s environment comes to reflect their state of mind.

You Realize What You Visualize

Visualization is a core meditation practice in all Eastern meditation traditions, as well as in Judea-Christian and Islamic meditation and prayer practices. Every journey of sustainable weight loss begins with a positive and compelling future vision, an impetus for action and change.³

A person’s success in reaching a destination hinges on how clearly they see and imagine it. To the extent overweight people can visualize their “right-sized” self, along with the many emotional and physical benefits it promises, to that degree they unleash the power to enact that vision through healthy lifestyle changes. In time, they discover that their right-sized, ideal self is more aligned with who they really are, with their higher nature, than their overweight self, which often is in fact a cover-up.

Visualization is also an effective tool for rehearsing success. Visualizing events, actions, and performances so one can subsequently execute them successfully is a mainstay in sports performance psychology. It can also help performing artists improve stage presence, energy, and focus. People actualize what they envision, and the extent of actualization reflects the clarity and specificity of that vision.

Strengthening Intention, Will, and Volition

A person’s intentions are a powerful energy, one of four major nutriments that either can lead to suffering or to wellbeing, depending on how it’s used.⁴ So much suffering in life is caused by pursuing intentions that do not in fact lead to happiness, such as egoism, status, and power. Any person can work with intentions as meditation objects and consciously sculpt and reshape them. On the other hand, unconscious intentions are the lifeblood of impulsivity, bad habits, and addictions.

The strength of one’s will is not merely an ephemeral mental state. Willpower is embodied, and it clearly shows in one’s face, body, and demeanor. Strengthening and purifying the will is a spiritual practice that’s accessible through seated, moving, and somatic meditation. Willpower is no cliché. It is indeed a core power, a force for transformation when it’s under conscious direction.

Shifting into the Higher Gear of Action

Anyone who’s been a social science student in the past 30 years has probably heard of the Transtheoretical Model of Change (TTM). Initially, there were five stages in this model: Pre-contemplation, Contemplation, Preparation, Action, and Maintenance. The 6th stage, Recycle, was added later, because relapse is inevitable in most change processes. This model was designed to help people overcome addictions and problematic behaviors such as alcohol or drug abuse, overeating, and smoking.⁵

In working with overweight and obese people over the years, I’ve noticed that many get stuck between the Preparation and Action stages. They have the best of intentions, profess complete commitment to weight loss, and know what it will take. But they can’t seem to get going—at least not for long. It’s fascinating to see who ultimately makes the leap to the other shore of sustained action. Often, powerful activating events impel them to action, events somewhat reminiscent of the 12-step principle of “hitting bottom.”

In these instances, the energy expenditure side of the weight-loss equation usually leads. Suddenly inspired or triggered, the overweight person ramps up their physical activity through a movement or fitness discipline and starts burning calories with a vengeance. Day-by-day, they get fitter and stronger. They feel better physically and grow more confident. These physical changes set off a cascade of positive physiological, psychological, and social changes and events that ultimately sweep the nutrition side of the equation along and, presto—they start eating more wisely. A few examples might illustrate this phenomenom.

Sgt. B. was an active-duty Army sergeant in his mid-30s, 60 lbs. overweight. He was self-conscious about his physical appearance and tended to socially isolate. One day, after an officer made fun of his physique one time too many, Sgt. B. decided to take up Tae Kwon Do. As he gained higher and higher martial arts belt ranks, he also dropped weight. With each lost pound and higher belt came a new level of self-respect and social grace. A long-time bachelor, Sgt. B. soon met a nice lady and began dating steadily. The change in his self-esteem, regard for others, and positive outlook could not be missed by anyone who knew him before.

Mary O. was an aspiring actress in her mid-20’s trying against all odds to make it in LA. She had a pretty face, but was carrying 35 lbs. of excess weight, which, at 5’3″, gave her a somewhat cherubic appearance. One day her acting coach told her that her weight was an obstacle to her getting any leading roles. She was so distraught at the potential loss of her lifelong dream that she immediately started a walking, stretching, and weight-training program—having never before exercised at all. Within three months, she became a committed runner, ramped up her training, and went on to run several marathons. If you saw her now, you’d never guess she’d been overweight a day in her life. She has the physique of an elite 1500-meter runner.

Debbie R. was the nicest person I’ve ever met. She was also morbidly obese. Her accommodating nature had landed her in a relationship that was so abusive as to be considered criminally cruel. One day, after one degrading put-down too many from her partner, she left their home and relationship. Two weeks later, she bought a mountain bike, which she could barely remain seated on it at first, given her girth. Debbie persisted and, in one month, was riding twice a day for one or two hours at a time. In eight months she went from 266 lbs. to 145 lbs., obese no more.

In each case, and many similar ones, the overweight or obese person made that vital shift into Action by adopting a movement and fitness discipline they approached almost as a spiritual undertaking, a veritable conversion process. It became as much a means for retraining their minds as their bodies. There soon followed a pronounced leap in body awareness and emotional wellbeing. Soon after, they stopped using food to escape the reality of their lives and trials.

Something fundamental and energetic is going on here. Eastern medicine might say these movement disciplines activated Jing energy (essence), notably in the kidneys and adrenal glands, the drivers of commitment and will. In Western terms, endurance and strength training both stimulate the endocrine system to induce many beneficial changes, primarily increased levels of cortisol, adrenaline, noradrenaline, dopamine, growth hormone, and testosterone, along with greater insulin sensitivity.⁶

I’ve also observed that physical training regimens that strengthen the legs and core body also tend to strengthen the hara (lower tan t’ien), that sense of grounding power in the lower abdomen. In the Far East, this energy has for thousands of years been equated with drive, resilience, and courage. Simply put, mind-body disciplines give you more guts. And the longer an overweight or obese person sticks to their regimen, the stronger their drive and momentum become.

Sustainable Weight Loss Takes a Change of Mind

A core tenet of Taoism and Qigong goes like this:

Where the mind goes, the Qi (ch’i) follows.

This statement is both simple and profound. On one level it means that a dispersed or distracted mind scatters and wastes a person’s vital energy. It also means that the mind has the power to focus this energy into a force that serves vitality and wellbeing, which means weight loss for 70% of Americans. In order to work on the body, one must work on the mind as well. In my experience, this change in mind state is the single most important factor in weight loss, the force that ultimately inspires the leap from Preparation to Action and Maintenance.

Being obese or overweight is not merely a physical condition. It’s a mindset. And, like any mindset, it can be changed. The neural pathways can be rewritten. I like to put it this way:

“To change your body is to change your mind about yourself.”

It’s well and fine for someone to want to lose weight. It’s a good start. But it’s not enough. They’ve got to do it. They’ve got to take Action. And they can. They will. Meditation can show them how to use the force.

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2. Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. (2003). Weight Management: State of the Science and Opportunities for Military Programs. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press.
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4. Nhat Hanh, T. (1998). The heart of the Buddha’s teaching: Transforming suffering into peace, joy, and liberation. pp. 37-38. Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press.
5. Prochaska, J. O., Norcross, J. & DeClemente, C. (1994). Changing for Good: A Revolutionary Six-Stage Program for Overcoming Bad Habits and Moving Your Life Positively Forward. New York: Quill.
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