26 LOSE IT! VOLUME 30
doing other activities and paying special
attention to how food tastes. The trial lasted
15 weeks and the results revealed that the
mindful group lost an average of 1.9kg –
seven times more than the other group’s
average weight loss of 0.2kg.
According to the Harvard Medical
School Special Health Report, digestion
involves a complex series of hormonal
signals between the gut and the nervous
system. It seems to take about 20 minutes
for the brain to register fullness, which is
where that often-quoted figure comes from.
The danger is obviously that when you eat
too quickly, you may feel full only after
you’ve already overeaten, instead of putting
a stop to it before you reach that point. On
top of that, eating while you’re distracted
by activities such as driving or watching
TV may also slow down or stop digestion,
which means you could even be missing out
on the full nutritional benefits of your food.
Dr Daphne Lyell, a homeopath and
integrative GP at White Lotus Wellness
Centre in Cape Town explains that simply
eating well is not enough. ‘I have clients
who eat well but they’re not digesting
properly, so they cannot absorb the
nutrients. We realised the reason was that
they were eating on the run,’ she says.
‘We are living in a “fight, flight or
freeze” society. Imagine running away from
a lion – your instinct is survival. You don’t
run away eating a sandwich. Similarly, when
really stressed, you don’t feel hungry. The
blood is shunted away from the digestive
tract to the organs needed for survival – the
muscles, heart, lungs and brain. This is the
sympathetic nervous
system. The body
does not know the
difference between
the two stressors; it
responds in the same
way. The balancing
system is called the
parasympathetic
nervous system, or the
‘rest, digest and heal’
system. This system
is dominant when youfeel rested, make love, get a hug– basically a state in which
you feel relaxed and the blood flows to the digestive tract.
In this state our immune system is most efficient and we can
digest and absorb nutrients properly,’
Daphne adds.
‘So when the balance between
the two systems is more towards the
sympathetic state, it compromises our
immune function. Mindfulness helps
to activate your parasympathetic
system. Be still enough to hear your
body whisper, then it doesn’t need
to shout.’
Research conducted at Wageningen
University in the Netherlands indicated
that while mindful eaters do not