Can mindfulness decrease your waist size and improve insulin resistance?
The short answer is yes.
The solution no one wants to hear. It is true, but I know when I tell a client to focus on their breath or make a video explaining how meditation or simple breathwork improves the stress response, which will improve psychological and physiological responses in the body and mind, that I am getting eye rolls on the other end. I still cannot help but come back to the breath. I have spent countless hours in research through books, articles, podcasts, and other sources of information, and no matter how much I want to find another solution to manage stress and improve stress or emotional eating responses to improve weight loss or bodyfat reduction goals, I always find my way back to the breath. There is also journaling, but few want to hear that either. However, for this writing, I want to focus on the breath.
I read a book in 2023 called “Altered Traits” by Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson, which explained the “brain science” behind meditation. A few weeks ago, I felt an urge to revisit this book regarding a specific chapter explaining the stress response related to the amygdala. The key point of this chapter was to show how mindfulness practice decreased amygdala response during stress-induced stimuli in meditators vs nonmeditators. The significance of this response is to understand that when we are under stress, we are more likely to respond to help ourselves feel better (a stress coping mechanism). The goal of mediation, or simply, breathwork, is to reduce the activity of the amygdala during stressful events so that we do not activate our fight or flight response, which leads to an emotional response such as stress or emotional eating. As a researcher, revisiting this book made me curious about what the current research is saying compared to a few years ago.
“The mind tamed using meditation becomes gentle and obedient. It follows one’s wishes, and one can direct it to any object one wants. That is the way it is.”
(Mahasi Sayadaw, 2016, p. 26)
I think of this statement, and it is why I come back to this belief that following the breath is the key to emotional regulation that will lead to weight loss and body fat reduction goals, because that is how it is. I cannot find any other method that directly works and is also side effect free. Remember, we all have to breathe daily, so why not track a few breaths daily to help ourselves regulate our stress response system and tame the amygdala?
What does science show that meditators already know? In a meta-analysis looking at the impact of meditation on stress-induced obesogenic eating behaviors, it was concluded that there is support that meditation can reduce stress and cortisol, which results in the improvement of glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity, which helps regulate eating behavior, leading to weight loss (Quinones et al., 2025). What is seen is that, chronic stress leads to stress and emotional eating through the activation of the HPA-axis (hypothalamus-pituitary-axis) and this results in the interaction between cortisol and the dopaminergic system, neuropeptide Y, ghrelin, leptin, and insulin (Quinoes et al., 2025) essentially meaning that when under stress, we can be in a greater position to seek out food to comfort ourselves leading to overindulges and weight gain over time.
Dopamine – Think about seeking food when under stress to comfort oneself.
Neuropeptide Y – relates to food seeking. When under stress, it is released in the hypothalamus (the above HPA-axis) and the amygdala when cortisol is elevated, leading to emotional eating.
Ghrelin – located in the gut and the simple description is that it signals hunger. It sends a signal to the hypothalamus (again HPA-axis). It also activates dopamine and can increase food cravings when under stress.
Leptin – is the opposite of ghrelin in that when you are full, it signals the hypothalamus (another HPA-axis reference) to end eating. However, when you are under chronic stress, elevated cortisol levels can result in leptin resistance, which means the hypothalamus stops listening to this signal, and food cravings continue, leading to overeating.
Insulin – helps regulate blood sugar, fat storage, and energy use, and it moves glucose from the bloodstream into cells. Cortisol elevation as a result of chronic stress causes your cells to become less responsive to insulin, leading to insulin resistance, and this impairment also increases food cravings.
It has been shown that mediation training can lower cortisol levels and help regulate the stress response (Quinoes et al., 2025), and in a qualitative study, it was concluded that mindfulness techniques, including meditation, helped participants regulate their emotions and improve their self-restraint in stressful or threatening situations (Hamilin et al., 2025). Goleman and Davidson (2017) repeatedly referred to studies that showed up to a 50% reduction in amygdala activity was shown in experienced meditators during baseline stressful states compared to non-meditators. In the context of stress or emotional eating responses due to high stress events, the main goal is to be able to make an executive function decision through the prefrontal cortex versus a heightened amygdala response signaling the fight or flight response leading to the activation of cortisol through the HPA-axis signaling the emotional or stress eating responses to the above descriptions.
There are multiple mechanisms at play during stress aside from the activation of cortisol, including unconscious triggers that lead to other areas of the brain that can trigger emotional eating responses that must be recognized. However, one thing we can do that can work now: follow some breathwork protocol to start working on the stress response, reduce cortisol, and feel more in control of our stress responses that impact food cravings and emotional eating. A correlation was shown in overweight and obese women that mindfulness training led to weight loss and a reduction in emotional eating responses (Salvo et al., 2021) and another study was able to show that out of 764 adults, those who reported meditating had a lower bodyweight then those who did not mediate (Olivera et al., 2023). A reduction in eating has also been shown through mindfulness training as individuals reported experiencing a deeper connection with their food, leading to eating with a purpose and making overall healthy choices with food as they ate based on their body’s signals as well as their personal needs and values (Hamilin et al., 2025). There are multiple ways that meditation or breathwork practices influence positive emotional and stress-eating responses. From the empirical side, it is shown that meditation or breathwork can reduce cortisol and lessen activity in the amygdala when placed under stressful situations. On the qualitative side, it is reported that mindfulness training helps improve personal connection to food, encouraging purposeful eating and improving control over food choices when under stress. The big takeaway is that meditation to control stress or emotional eating or to improve insulin sensitivity through cortisol management seems basic because it is basic. While I am not trying to claim that mindfulness training is going to be the end all be all to weight loss needs, but it can improve your weight loss program by helping you manage stressful situations that may lead to emotional or stress eating that we all are going to encounter at some point during a weight loss or bodyfat reduction program.
REFERENCES
Goleman, D., & Davidson, R. J. (2017). Altered traits: Science reveals how meditation changes your mind, brain, and body. Avery.
Hamilin, S. P., Said, S. N. M., Roose, A. R. M., Fernandez, J. A., & Baharom, N. N. (2025). Exploring the Role of a Mindful Eating Module for Emotion Regulation and Behavioural Change: A Qualitative Study among Female University Students. Journal of Cognitive Sciences and Human Development. Vol, 11, 1. https://doi.org/10.33736/jcshd.8692.2025
Mahasi Sayadaw. (2016). Manual of insight (H. B. Jack, Trans.). Wisdom Publications.
Oliveira, J. P. T., do Carmo, S. G., de Almeida Aragão, B., Cunha, J., & Botelho, P. B. (2023). Meditation practices and their relationship with eating behavior, weight changes, and mental health in adults from different regions of Brazil: A cross-sectional study. Nutrition, 109, 111972. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nut.2023.111972
Salvo, V., Sanudo, A., Kristeller, J., Schveitzer, M. C., Martins, P., Favarato, M. L., & Demarzo, M. (2022). Mindful eating for overweight and obese women in Brazil: An exploratory mixed-methods pilot study. Nutrition and health, 28(4), 591-601. https://doi.org/10.1177/02601060211052794
Quinones, D., Barrow, M., & Seidler, K. (2025). Investigating the Impact of Ashwagandha and Meditation on Stress Induced Obesogenic Eating Behaviours. Journal of the American Nutrition Association, 44(1), 68-88. https://doi.org/10.1080/27697061.2024.2401054
