Mindfulness, self-compassion, and mindful eating in relation to fat and sugar consumption: an exploratory investigation

Abstract

While much research has focused on overeating when exploring constructs of mindfulness, mindful eating, and self-compassion, there is limited research on the specific relationship of these constructs with consumption of energy-dense foods that have a large impact on weight regulation. In a cross-sectional study, university students (n = 546) were recruited to explore the relationship between mindfulness, mindful eating, self-compassion, and fat and/or sugar consumption. Results indicated that all constructs were negatively related to fat and sugar consumption, but self-compassion did not do so in a univariate fashion. When investigating subscales, negative aspects such as isolation and over-identification show a significant positive relationship to fat and sugar consumption. Possible explanations and future directions are discussed further with an emphasis on the need for more empirical work. Level of Evidence: Level V, cross-sectional descriptive study.

How does mindful eating without non-judgement, mindfulness and self-compassion relate to motivations to eat palatable foods in a student population?

“…Higher levels of self-compassion were associated with participants eating in a mindful way; with results illustrating that those participants who demonstrated higher levels of mindful eating had less motivation to eat palatable foods, and also had lower BMI's, this was significant for social, coping, enhancement and conformity motivations. These findings are in line with previous research (Jordan et al, 2015;Mantzios et al, 2018b) in suggesting that mindful eating is associated with healthier eating and lower BMIs, while Mantzios et al (2018b) highlighted the same relationships, regardless of the previously used mindfulness scale being inclusive of non-judgement (which we discuss later). When findings were explored further a mediation effect was observed for mindful eating on motivations to eat palatable foods via self-compassion, which was not the case with mindfulness as originally expected.…”

Mindfulness-based emotional eating awareness training: taking the emotional out of eating

“…In effect they became more "in-tune" with or aware of the influence of external and internal triggers to eat, obtained distance from the influence of aversive emotions, in effect becoming less reactive, and developed enhanced control over impulsive urges. This explanation can be supported in part by the evidence reviewed regarding the positive effects of mindfulness on varied measures of cue-driven and emotional eating [31,32,44,49,50,[56][57][58][59]. However, until a randomized trial is conducted to disentangle the meditation and educational elements compared to an active control such conclusions warrant cautious interpretation.…”

“…This is relevant to emotional eating as cross-sectional evidence indicates that experiential avoidance mediates the relationship between negative emotions and emotional eating [31]. Cross-sectional evidence also suggests that mindfulness is related to healthier eating, an association that may operate through greater acceptance connected to self-compassion [32]. Mindfulness meditation facilitates acceptance and tolerance of negative emotions [33].…”

The moderating effects of mindful eating on the relationship between emotional functioning and eating styles in overweight and obese women

“…Furthermore, the current results [ 21 , 71 , 72 ] demonstrate that dialectical behaviour therapy (focusing, among others, on emotional functioning) increases the levels of intuitive eating and adaptive emotion regulation while decreasing the levels of binge eating disorder symptoms, emotional eating and psychological distress, and with Wnuk’s and Du’s [ 25 ] model, which describes that mindful eating techniques improve emotional functioning (acceptance and tolerance emotions). Moreover, other studies show that mindfulness and mindful eating are associated with food intake (significant and negative relationship with fat and sugar consumption) [ 73 ] and mindfulness and emotion regulation abilities can be useful in bariatric surgery candidate [ 70 ]. According to what described above, we created a complex psychological intervention (focusing on regulations of emotions, mindful eating and body image) whose effectiveness is currently being evaluated in overweight patients.…”