Keep calm and stop snacking: Mindfulness can help us slim

IF you are struggling to stick to a boring juice diet or to get to the gym, mindfulness may be the answer.

The discipline, popular with celebrities such as Emma Watson and Angelina Jolie, has been found to lower the blood sugar of women who are overweight.

This could be because mindfulness helps with self-control, making it easier to stick to a healthy lifestyle.

A study of 86 women by Penn State College of Medicine found their blood sugar dropped after just two months of mindfulness sessions.

The fashionable technique, which involves focusing on the present, breathing and your environment, worked almost three times as well as healthy education sessions. It follows research showing mindfulness training reduces episodes of binge eating and improves self-control.

The study, published in the journal Obesity, states: ‘ If MSBR ( mindfulness- based stress reduction) lowers glucose in people with overweight or obesity, then it could be an effective tool for preventing or treating type 2 diabetes.’

Tam Fry, of the National Obesity Forum, said: ‘ Mindfulness does work but unfortunately it may take a lot more studies before it rolls out across the UK.

‘For the last 13 years successive governments have been advised that, where the need is urgent, bold measures should be implemented even if a shed full of data is not yet available to support their use. If mindfulness were expensive, the NHS might be excused from taking the plunge, but it is not so there is no excuse.’ The mindfulness study randomly assigned 86 overweight and obese women to eight weeks of mindfulness or health education, then followed them up for four months.

Despite lectures about diet and exercise in the health education group, with women inventing their own fitness plans, their blood sugar fell by only 3.2 milligrams per decilitre in this group.

Those who practised mindfulness saw their blood sugar fall almost three times as much, by 8.9 milligrams per decilitre in the same time period of eight weeks.

The study, led by Dr Nazia Raja-Khan, states that the reasons are unclear, because the women did not lose weight or see their stress hormones drop.

But it adds: ‘One possible explanation is that the increased mindfulness could have made it easier for the MBSR group to adhere to the diet and exercise guidelines we gave them.’

Dr Emily Burns, of Diabetes UK, said: ‘We know that mindfulness can improve mental wellbeing for some people, but more research is needed.’