Can meditation help you lose weight?

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Digity
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Joined: Wed Mar 30, 2011 2:13 am

Re: Can meditation help you lose weight?

Post by Digity »

I think the practice as a whole should do this. The Buddha did say that we should be moderate in our eating. If you eat mindfully then I think it's hard to just pig out on food. By eating slowly and mindfully you tend not to over indulge. However, I usually tend to eat without much thought or mindfulness and notice that's when I tend to over eat.
lojong1
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Joined: Sat Dec 26, 2009 2:59 am

Re: Can meditation help you lose weight?

Post by lojong1 »

Didn't Paramahansa Yogananda say he could choose his weight with a thought?
lojong1
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Joined: Sat Dec 26, 2009 2:59 am

Re: Can meditation help you lose weight?

Post by lojong1 »

http://anmolmehta.com/blog/2007/09/06/m ... instantly/
excerpt from 'Autobiography of a Yogi'.
"‘Really, it has been your thoughts that have made you feel alternately weak and strong.’ My guru looked at me affectionately. ‘You have seen how your health has exactly followed your subconscious expectations. Thought is a force, even as electricity or gravitation. The human mind is a spark of the almighty consciousness of God. I could show you that whatever your powerful mind believes very intensely would instantly come to pass.‘

"Knowing that Lahiri Mahasaya never spoke idly, I addressed him with great awe and gratitude.: ‘Master, if I think that I am well and that I have regained my former weight, shall those things come to pass?’

"’It is so, even at this moment.’ My guru spoke gravely, his gaze concentrated on my eyes.

"I instantly felt an increase not only of strength but of weight. Lahiri Mahasaya retreated into silence. After a few hours at his feet, I returned to my mother’s house, where I stayed during my visits to Banaras.

"My son! What is the matter? Are you swelling with dropsy?" Mother could hardly believe her eyes. My body was now as full and robust as it had been before my illness.

"I weighed myself and found that in one day I had gained fifty pounds; they have remained permanently."
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drifting cloud
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Re: Can meditation help you lose weight?

Post by drifting cloud »

greggorious wrote:Just thought I'd ask :)
Are you asking if you are going to magically shed pounds simply by sitting on a cushion? The answer is probably no.

If you are asking if meditation can help you become more aware of your eating habits, help you build up the mental strength to overcome unskillful eating habits, give you a source of ease and happiness that surpasses the pleasure you get from eating, make you less inclined to eat overall, then I think the answer is yes, meditation can help you do all of this, which is conducive to weight loss.
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convivium
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Re: Can meditation help you lose weight?

Post by convivium »

i didn't mean to suggest that coffee is a good caffeine source.
Just keep breathing in and out like this. Don't be interested in anything else. It doesn't matter even if someone is standing on their head with their ass in the air. Don't pay it any attention. Just stay with the in-breath and the out-breath. Concentrate your awareness on the breath. Just keep doing it. http://www.ajahnchah.org/book/Just_Do_It_1_2.php
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