Efficacy of Healing meditation in reducing anxiety of individuals at the phase of weight loss maintenance: A randomized blinded clinical trial

Objective: To verify the efficacy of Healing Meditation in reducing anxiety levels in individuals on a weight loss maintenance program.

Design: A randomized, controlled, evaluator-blinded clinical trial, conducted between January and October 2014, with a follow-up of 12 weeks.

Setting: A weight loss secondary care facility in Salvador, Brazil., of 41 patients at the weight maintenance phase (Mean initial BMI 33.6±4.7kg/m², who had attained a mean BMI of 24.5±1.6kg/m² in a median period of 7 months).

Intervention: An 8-week Healing Meditation program (n=20), consisting of a 1h weekly meeting, or for a control group on the waiting list (n=21), in addition to the standard clinical program.

Main outcome measures: Total anxiety was measured by the Hamilton Anxiety Scale (HAM-A), before and after the intervention. Secondary analyses included comparison of the effect of meditation on the somatic and psychic components of the scale.

Results: Through an intention to treat analysis, we detected a difference in the mean variation between the intervention and control groups in the total anxiety scores of 7.7 (95% CI 6.3-9.2; Cohen's d=3.41). Means and standard deviations for pre and post intervention anxiety scores were 15.5 (3.4) and 7.8 (2.0) for the intervention group and 14.8 (3.4) and 14.9 (3.4) for the control.

Conclusion: Healing meditation significantly reduced the anxiety of obese individuals, in the phase of weight maintenance, suggesting this to be an effective auxiliary resource for weight loss maintenance.