Beyond Willpower
- Sonia McIndoe
- Jun 1
- 6 min read
Updated: Jun 10
How Mindfulness and Meditation Support Weight Loss
Weight loss isn't just about what you eat - it's about how you feel, how you think and how you respond to the world around you. After weight loss surgery, many people focus on food rules, scales, and tracking... but forget to check in with themselves.
This is where meditation and mindfulness come in. Not as fluffy extras - but as essential tools to help you regulate, reset, and reconnect with your body.
In this blog, we’ll explore the practical ways meditation and mindfulness can support long-term weight loss, emotional balance, and self-trust, especially for those using meditation and/or on a bariatric journey.
Mindfulness Isn’t a Luxury - It’s a Lifeline
When we talk about mindfulness, we’re talking about being present - the ability to anchor yourself in the now. That might sound simple, but for many of us, our minds live in the past (regrets, shame, old stories) or the future (what if I fail, what if I regain, what if I can’t stick to this?).
Being mindful helps you break the cycle of anxious overthinking and self-criticism. It allows you to respond, not react to choose what you put in your mouth with intention, rather than out of habit or emotion.
Mindfulness is a practice - not perfection. Even just a few minutes a day can rewire the way you show up for yourself.
Meditation for the Bariatric Brain: Slowing the Spin
After surgery, your body changes fast - but your mind can take a while to catch up. Meditation helps you bridge that gap. It slows the mental spin, brings you back to your breath, and gives you space to notice what's really going on beneath the surface.
Are you really hungry or just overwhelmed?
Are you craving food, or comfort?
Meditation helps you hear those quieter whispers that are easy to miss when you're rushing through your day or spiralling in self-doubt. It’s not about emptying your mind; it’s about meeting yourself with curioisty and compassion.
Mindful Eating: Rebuilding Trust Bite by Bite
So many post-op clients tell me they’ve lost touch with their hunger and fullness cues. That makes sense - especially after years of dieting, emotional eating, or using food to self-soothe.
Mindful eating is a powerful way to rebuild trust with your body. It means:
- Slowing down
- Tuning in to your senses
- Noticing flavours, textures, and satisfaction
- Recognising when you're physically full and when you're emotionally empty.
This isn’t about guilt or rigid rules. It’s about learning to pause between the urge and the action. To ask, “Is this what I really need right now?”
Getting Grounded: Your Body Is a Safe Place to Be
Many people pre & post-op feel disconnected from their bodies either because of past trauma, shame, or simply being in survival mode for too long.
Grounding techniques (like breathwork, sensory awareness, or placing your feet on the earth) can help you come back into your body safely.
It’s especially helpful during moments of:
- Cravings
- Emotional overwhelm
- Head hunger
- Food noise
- Anxiety about progress or perfection
Grounding tells your nervous system: You are safe. You are here. You are okay.
Releasing the Past & Reframing the Future
A huge part of mindfulness is learning to let go of the stories that no longer serve you. That might include:
- Regret over past behaviours
- Shame about regaining, or slipping into old habits.
- Fear about the future ("Will I mess this up again?")
Meditation teaches you how to stay in the moment. Not five steps ahead. Not three years behind. It's a practice of presence, not pressure. When you live in the now, you get your power back.
Creating an Inner Pause Before You React
Have you ever found yourself standing in the pantry, not even sure how you got there? Or mid-binge, thinking, “What am I doing?” I feel I am in an almost dissociated, robotic state. In the past my mindless munching could go on for days or weeks, now I have a secret weapon!
These moments are exactly when mindfulness becomes a superpower. It creates space between stimulus and response.
Instead of reacting impulsively, you pause. Breathe. Check in.
That pause is everything.
It’s where you can choose self-compassion over self-sabotage.
It’s where you can ask, “What do I really need right now?”
It’s where change begins.
Long-Term Success Starts with Self-Compassion
Here's the truth: You don't meditate or eat mindfully because you are trying to "be good". You do it because you deserve to feel calm. connected, and in control.
Mindfulness reminds you that you are not broken. Meditation helps you build emotional safety from within.
Both help you stay consistent, not through force or fear but through kindness and awareness.
And that’s the foundation of long-term weight loss success.
You’ve already done the brave thing, choosing to change your life through surgery and/or medication. Now it’s time to go deeper, to reconnect with yourself on every level - body, mind, and nervous system.
Meditation and mindfulness are not quick fixes. But they are quiet revolutions. They help you build new pathways to handle life without turning to food and the mindset to thrive for years to come.
If you’d love help getting started with meditation, mindful eating, or nervous system regulation, I’ve created a free downloadable guide with 5 simple practices you can start today.
Download it from the box below or DM me for the link.
Or reach out to learn more about how my coaching can support you on your weight loss
journey.
Join me for a free webinar!
So, I’ll leave you with a warm invitation to my 8 Fundamentals FREE webinar where I share my daily to-do list and how I actually manage my bariatric journey day by day.
It’s in an ‘hour of power’ where I squeeze a lot of valuable information for you into the 60 minutes on Zoom - totally for free.
Ready for more? Let's do the "Groundwork" together. This is small group coaching via Zoom, so you can join from anywhere in New Zealand.
About Sonia McIndoe
Hi! I'm Sonia, a NZ Bariatric Life Coach, who has had weight loss surgery and maintained a 70kg weight loss over more than nine years. I walk the walk and have dealt with my own regain by continuing to use and hone my own fundamentals and strategies which I share with you. Like you, I struggled with my weight...
I actually struggled with it my entire life. At 5 years of age my ballet teacher told me “I danced like a baby elephant”. I yo-yo dieted my way to a body I loathed and had given up on. Food was my friend - but it was a love/hate relationship. In many ways it saved me, but it was also slowly killing me.
I wasn’t convinced even Weight Loss Surgery would work for me … why would it when nothing else had!
10 years post Weight Loss Surgery later and still several dress sizes smaller, I am the happiest I have ever been.
You can have the success you dream of too. I am so passionate about sharing how, that I work full time as a Bariatric Coach.
I credit my Weight Loss Surgery with my 70kg weight loss, but keeping it off, I credit to doing the mind work. It’s this mind work that I teach in my Mind Empowerment coaching programmes.
The Mind Empowerment Programme
Sonia McIndoe's coaching programme is called Mind Empowerment and starts with a free one hour webinar, "The 8 Fundamentals for Bariatric Success".
The next stage is group coaching by Zoom to do the "Groundwork", followed by "Mind Empowerment".
One on one individual coaching is also available. Sonia coaches live via Zoom, so you can be anywhere in New Zealand and access help from her as your weight loss coach.
Find out more at www.mindempowerment.co.nz
