Mindfulness May Help People Stick With Healthy Habits Like the DASH Diet
- New research found that mindfulness helps people stick with the DASH diet.
- The DASH diet is known to lower blood pressure and may be a good option for people with hypertension.
- Experts recommend practicing small, mindful habits over longer periods of time to see the best results.
Mindfulness could help you stick to the DASH diet, a new study finds.
Sticking to a new eating plan can be difficult, but certain habits and disciplines may help.
New research, published last month in JAMA Network Open, found that practicing mindfulness helps people better follow the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet, which is known to lower blood pressure.
Not only did the people improve self-awareness, but they stuck more accurately to the DASH healthy eating pattern, Eric B. Loucks, PhD, study author and an associate professor and director of the c at Brown University, told Health.
For the study, Loucks and his team used the Mindfulness-Based Blood Pressure Reduction (MB-BP) program, which has been previously confirmed as effective at reducing systolic blood pressure.
“This research has direct implications for bringing awareness into people’s lives regarding modifiable determinants of hypertension,” Maryanna D. Klatt, PhD, director of the Center for Integrative Medicine and a mindfulness educator at The Ohio State University College of Medicine, told Health.
Loucks’ MB-BP program uses a combination of emotional regulation, yoga, self-awareness, and attention control.
It centers on teaching those tools to lower blood pressure, specifically. It’s based on Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), a proven method of using mindfulness to achieve goals.
Here’s how mindfulness may impact the success of the DASH diet, as well as tips for being more mindful in your day-to-day routine.
Getty Images / LumiNola
Creating Mindful Habits Makes a Difference
Loucks’ study focused on mindfulness education and practice to follow the DASH diet and lower blood pressure.
99 participants attended an orientation, eight 2.5-hour group sessions a week, and went to a one-day retreat—10 sessions of training total. Each participant received individualized education about hypertension, behavior change support, and learned about mindful eating for hypertension.
People in the program were encouraged to practice mindfulness techniques at home for 45 minutes a day, six days a week.
The control group, on the other hand, only received educational materials on how to control blood pressure.
Everyone in the trial received and was trained on how to use a home blood-pressure monitor, and got information on local primary care doctors.
All of the participants had elevated blood pressure. At the beginning of the trial, none of them meditated more than once a week.
To see how well the MB-BP program worked, researchers used two scores: a Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA) questionnaire and a DASH adherence score.
The MAIA uses a 0–5 score and is intended to assess how in tune people are with their body’s sensations and cues. The DASH adherence score ranges from 0–11 and gauges how well people stuck to the diet.
Six months into the study, participants in the mindfulness training program saw a 0.71-point increase in their MAIA score—that was 0.54 points higher than the median score of the control group. Similarly, people in the program increased their median DASH adherence score by 0.34, while people in the control group saw a 0.04-point decrease.
In the future, Loucks wants to assess if the MB-BP program still works as well with fewer sessions or a shorter program length. He also wants to see how well MB-BP would work in real-world settings, and how insurers may be able to cover it.
Environmental and Emotional Triggers Often Guide Eating Choices
Many people eat in response to environmental and emotional triggers, rather than using cues of hunger and satiety to guide their eating, Michelle May, MD, a retired doctor and mindful eating educator from Phoenix, AZ, told Health after reviewing the research.
Environmental triggers include seeing commercials for food or situations you associate with eating—like a movie theater, baseball game, or the holidays.
Emotional triggers include stress, boredom, or loneliness—and even pleasant emotions like celebrations, said May.
“Mindfulness helps you change habitual, mindless, reactive behaviors because being in the present moment allows you to consciously choose your response,” she said.
According to Loucks, three areas make mindfulness effective at impacting eating habits:
- Self-awareness: Noticing hunger and fullness, how different foods make you feel, and being aware of eating behaviors and habits
- Attention control: Being present when you eat, making conscious choices for healthy eating patterns, making choices against possibly unconscious unhealthy eating patterns, and making intentional choices when choosing food at restaurants and while grocery shopping
- Emotion regulation: Lowering your reactivity to food cravings, practicing self-kindness and compassion for your body and mind, and reducing psychological distress that can keep you from adhering to your desired eating patterns
Creating Mindful Habits Long-Term
Mindful eating can look different for everyone.
When it comes to sticking with the DASH diet, you may focus more on making choices about what goes into your food (while someone using mindful eating to reduce portion sizes may focus their approach on eating less).
Low sodium and low saturated fat are two hallmarks of the DASH diet. If you want to be more intentional about reducing your intake, you might use a mindfulness tool that helps you avoid or reduce the amount of salt you put in a meal. Or you might practice mindfulness when shopping for ingredients low in saturated fat.
In addition to learning mindfulness tools, it matters how often or how long you practice them, too.
According to Loucks, you’ll probably get better results the longer you practice but you’ve got to find the right amount of time that works for you.
“It comes down to awareness, compassion, and willingness to adopt the change you desire,” added Klatt.
Mindfulness is effective if you incorporate it into your daily life—even in small, but significant ways.
Klatt concluded: “These small ways can add up to very big changes in the way we approach our days.”