New Review Determines Weight Management Tool

Mindfulness practices such as meditation and conscious eating techniques may offer secrets to losing weight and keeping it off, say researchers from Montreal’s McGill University.

Noting some inconsistencies in prior findings, the researchers undertook a comprehensive analysis of 19 mindfulness and lifestyle modification studies that included 1,160 subjects. Here’s some of what the scientists learned from their investigation:

• Mindfulness practices are moderately effective for weight loss and significantly effective for modifying obesity- related eating behaviors.
• Interventions that include both formal and informal meditation protocols produce better weight loss results than studies featuring only formal meditation.
• Participants in mindfulness studies do not lose as much weight as participants in lifestyle modification studies. However, mindfulness participants continue to lose weight after study completion, whereas those in the lifestyle intervention group regain some of the weight they’ve lost.

The findings appeared in Obesity Reviews (2017; doi:10.1111/obr.12623).