Stress reduction and mindful eating may help curb weight gain

Mastering simple mindful eating and stress-reduction techniques could help prevent weight gain even without dieting, according to a new study.

UCSF researchers found that women in the study who experienced the greatest reduction in stress tended to have the most loss of deep belly fat.

To a greater degree than fat that lies just under the skin, this deep abdominal fat is associated with an elevated risk for developing heart disease or diabetes.

"You're training the mind to notice, but to not automatically react based on habitual patterns - to not reach for a candy bar in response to feeling anger, for example," said a researcher.

"If you can first recognize what you are feeling before you act, you have a greater chance of making a wiser decision," .

The women who participated in the study were not on calorie-counting diets. Instead, 24 of the 47 chronically stressed, overweight and obese women were randomly assigned to mindfulness trainingand practice, and the other 23 served as a control group.

Although no diets were prescribed, all participants attended one session about the basics of healthy eating and exercise.

The training included nine weekly sessions, each lasting 2 1/2 hours, during which the women learnedstress reduction techniques and how to be more aware of their eating by recognizing bodily sensations - including hunger, fullness and taste satisfaction. At week six they attended an intensive seven-hour, silent meditation retreat.

Those who had greater improvements in listening to their bodies' cues, or greater reductions in stress or cortisol, experienced the greatest reductions in abdominal fat.

Among the subset of obese women in the study, those who received the mindfulness training had significant reductions in cortisol after awakening and also maintained their total body weight, compared to women in the waitlist group, who had stable cortisol levels and continued to gain weight.