HHS HealthBeat (February 16, 2012)

Fighting stressful eating

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

Eating as a way to deal with stress can make people put on weight. But a small study indicates a way to reduce stress-eating.

At the University of California, San Francisco, obese women learned meditation for stress-reduction. And they learned the practice of mindful eating – how to tell the body’s real need for food from other cues to eat, such as stress.

Researcher Jennifer Daubenmier compared those women with similar women who were not trained. She says the trained women benefited:

“They stabilized their weight during the training, and the women who did not receive the training continued to gain weight. And they gained 3.8 pounds on average, or about a pound per month.”  (10 seconds)

The study in the Journal of Obesity was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Learn more at hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: February 16, 2012