Using guided meditation to lose weight: Could it be that Indian-style sitting and chanting a few “ommmms” could actually help you drop those pesky pounds? Well, why not? Just like our bodies, our mind can be infested with toxic substances like stress and self-doubt that throw a wrench into our journeys to attain the healthy, fit weight we dream about.

Recommended: 15 Minute Guided Meditation Video to Lose Weight

Our bodies are often a reflection our self-confidence. Therefore, if we view ourselves in an unhealthy way, our bodies are more likely to reflect that.

Why “guided” meditation? It’s just a personal preference; kind of like how some people prefer to take group classes at the gym, while others just pick up some weights and do their own routine. Personally, I have more success when there is audio with relaxing background music to walk me though meditation.

Here are two guided meditation videos intended to calm your mind while transforming your attitudes, anxieties, perceptions and self-expectations:

“You are the conscious creator of your reality. You simply prefer to feel good…”

*Consider watching these two guided meditations on alternating nights. If you like these videos, please bookmark or “like” this page for your future reference!

Guided Meditation: How A Healthy Mind Leads to a Healthy Body

“Gratitude is the law of beauty. Appreciate yourself for who you are, and who you are becoming.”

It’s not like your mind can outwardly display its poor well-being by packing on a muffin top or anything. All those unhealthy thoughts and insecurities that you harbor in your subconscious mind are invisible, but directly affect your physical body.

So naturally, we’re more likely to disregard the afflictions of our minds. But bad idea! The fitness of your thoughts is just as important as the diet and exercise you impose on your body.

Don’t take our word that meditation for weight loss works, though. A report published in the Journal of Consumer Research last year found that meditation is the “missing link” to tackling weight loss once and for all.

How Researchers Discovered Meditation is Key to Weight Loss

British researchers lead an investigation among 1,000 adults with some participants practicing the art of mindfulness. Keeping an eye on the subjects’ weight gain over a three-year period, the investigators concluded that “mindful” participants had higher self-control over their daily intake and, as a result, they shaved off more pounds in comparison to their non-mindful counterparts.

“Simply focusing on several general and more accessible aspects of the body, such as breathing and posture, can improve a consumer’s eating patterns,” the study’s author, Evelien Van De Veer, told Express.

The core reason why mindfulness positively affects our weight, the study says, is because it heightens one’s state of awareness on “satiety cues,” which is just fancy research talk for the moment when your body says, “Alright! You’ve had enough! You’re full! Put the pizza slice down!”

And, you can’t use being “busy” as an excuse to forgo meditation – the study adds that “short exposure” is all you need to trim off the weight.

How Else Can Guided Meditation Help Your Diet?

Britons aren’t the only ones touting meditation as a noteworthy practice for those seeking positive changes in their bodies. Last year, lead investigators from the University of San Francisco commissioned a smaller study among about 200 adults.

Tracking the participants for a year and a half, the researchers split the subjects into two groups. Both were given diet and exercise support, but only one group received an extra “oomph” for their weight loss journey: meditation.

This study also concluded that the meditative group lost more weight, but more significantly, the investigators found that there were great improvements to the subjects’ HDL cholesterol and triglyceride levels.

It’s amazing what we can achieve when we turn down the noise in our minds, and have confidence in ourselves!

How You Can Use Guided Meditation for Weight Loss

Well, you can shell out money for a personal meditation trainer, attend a yoga class, or purchase some 10-minute guided meditation tapes on iTunes, (for as little as $1 each) but heightened mindfulness can be right at your fingertips now for free.

Say hello to free guided meditation videos online! There are a number of good videos out there like the video above on sites like YouTube geared towards health-conscious users who want to achieve their weight loss goal through guided meditation. Just try not get lost in the rabbit hole of “Suggested Videos” and stay focused, alright?

Once you find one that calls to you, here are some tips from Weight Watchers (get free registration at WW) of how you can have a successful meditative session:

• Find solitude. Shut yourself off in a quiet room, away from all the madness and chaos. Take some time to wallow in the silence.
• Switch on the guided meditation. Close your eyes, relax your muscles, and allow to the speaker to guide you to a world of deeper consciousness and awareness.
• Pay special attention to your breathing. This is your time to take full, deep, stress-relieving breaths that may have been too shallow prior to this meditative practice.
• If you get distracted, no worries. Calmly acknowledge the interruption, but slowly bring yourself back into that deep breathing trance.

How You Can Expand Your Meditative Practice

Tiffany Cruikshank, author of “Meditate Your Weight,” doesn’t believe that meditation stops at sitting cross-legged for fifteen minutes and just going about your day. Oh, no, no! The state of mindfulness can be brought with you throughout your day, and here, according to Cruikshank, is how you do it:

• Be more observant. A lot of us cruise through the day on autopilot. We’re not taking the time to truly absorb our surroundings as we robotically go about our daily routines. And embedded in many of our daily routines is mindlessly chomping down on unhealthy snacks or lunches. Meditation encourages heightened awareness and, as a result, healthier decisions throughout our day.
• Be less judgmental. It’s easy to fall into self-defeating, negative thought traps when you’re not in a mindful state to catch ‘em and swat ‘em away. Meditation can help you shift your thoughts into a more positive light – this includes making snap judgments of others, as well. Yes, your friend hasn’t texted you back all day, but this is not an affront to you. Perhaps she just can’t find the time to get back to you. Cruikshank adds that jumping to conclusions – about ourselves and others – can negatively impact our weight.

Alison Shore Gaines, a holistic counselor at Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health in Lenox, also touts the advantages of expanding our meditative practices. She told Weight Watchers that she encourages people to five breaths before digging into their meals – it helps to cleanse the emotional attachment that drives us to reach into our refrigerators for comfort food.

Emotional Eating: Advice on Meditation, Mindful Eating, and Weight Loss from Deepak Chopra – youtube

Recently Deepak Chopra was on the Oprah Winfrey Network giving advice about meditation, mindful eating, and weight loss to an overweight woman. If you have 2 minutes, it’s worth watching this youtube video:

Weight Loss Is Often About Self-Confidence: Achieve Success By Adding Guided Meditation to Your Routine

By engaging in meditation at least once a day, and then slowly incorporating it into the greater part of our lives is a great way to not only shift the thoughts we have that push us to overeat, but also help us to reduce stress, improve our sleep, and lower our risk for depression.

Review by Missy

*We also have new coupons for Weight Watchers, Nutrisystem (here), and Noom (here). Meditation can improve the success rate of any diet or weight loss program, and getting up to a $50 discount helps your well-being, too!