Psychological Flexibility and Mindfulness Explain Intuitive Eating in Overweight Adults

Abstract

The current study investigated whether mindfulness and psychological flexibility, independently and together, explain intuitive eating. The participants were overweight or obese persons (N = 306) reporting symptoms of perceived stress and enrolled in a psychological lifestyle intervention study. Participants completed self-report measures of psychological flexibility; mindfulness including the subscales observe, describe, act with awareness, non-react, and non-judgment; and intuitive eating including the subscales unconditional permission to eat, eating for physical reasons, and reliance on hunger/satiety cues. Psychological flexibility and mindfulness were positively associated with intuitive eating factors. The results suggest that mindfulness and psychological flexibility are related constructs that not only account for some of the same variance in intuitive eating, but they also account for significant unique variances in intuitive eating. The present results indicate that non-judgment can explain the relationship between general psychological flexibility and unconditional permission to eat as well as eating for physical reasons. However, mindfulness skills-acting with awareness, observing, and non-reacting-explained reliance on hunger/satiety cues independently from general psychological flexibility. These findings suggest that mindfulness and psychological flexibility are interrelated but not redundant constructs and that both may be important for understanding regulation processes underlying eating behavior.

A structured literature review on the role of mindfulness, mindful eating and intuitive eating in changing eating behaviours: effectiveness and associated potential mechanisms

“…Four of the cohorts were from overweight/obese populations of which two were waiting for bariatric surgery (76,77) . Intuitive eating was associated with a lower BMI in four studies (68,70,74,75) . Other observations included a decreased emotional eating with higher levels of mindfulness (76,77,79) and a higher level of everyday mindfulness was related negatively to self-report serve size of energy-dense food (83) .…”

“…Nutrition Research Reviews (68,70,74,75) Mindful eating and decreased BMI 1 Positive (82) Intuitive eating and blood markers of cardiovascular risk 1 Positive (70) Mindfulness and decreased portion size 1 Positive (83) Intuitive eating and observing hunger cues 1 Positive (72) Mindfulness and decreased binge eating 2 Positive (76,80) Mindfulness and decreased emotional eating 3 Positive (76,77,79) Mindfulness and external eating 1 Positive (77) Mindfulness and reduced cravings 1 Positive (78) Mindfulness and restrained eating 1 Positive (75) Intuitive eating and freedom to eat 1 Positive (73) Intuitive eating and interoceptive sensitivity 1 Positive (71) Trait mindfulness and returning baseline brain network post-food cue exposure 1 Positive (78) Mindful eating and mental well-being 1 Positive (81) Intuitive eating and more pleasure associated with food 1 Positive (75) Intuitive eating and increased external and introjection regulation in behaviour questionnaire 1 Positive (69) * Note that effect size is not accounted for in the coding of positive. The code only provides an indicator of direction of results and is not trying to assess overall evidence.…”

“…Eight papers focused on intuitive eating (18,(68)(69)(70)(71)(72)(73)(74)(75) , five papers focused on mindfulness (76)(77)(78)(79)(80) , two papers focused on mindful eating (81,82) and one paper had a combined mindfulness and mindful eating approach (83) .…”

Teaching Intuitive Eating and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Skills Via a Web-Based Intervention: A Pilot Single-Arm Intervention Study

“…Tapper’s [27] findings suggest that the effect of the intervention on BMI was largely brought about by reductions in binge eating, while Lillis [25] reported that weight-specific acceptance and psychological flexibility significantly mediated BMI outcomes. Recently, Sairanen et al [30] reported that among overweight adults, the ability to recognize and accept aversive internal experiences (without reacting to them) was positively associated with eating for physical rather than emotional reasons.…”

The Relationship between Emotion Regulation and Intuitive Eating in Young Women

“…Nowadays we know that over one-third of adults in the United States are obese (Ogeden, Carroll, Kit &Flegal, 2013) and the rate of overweight and obesity have risen (World Health Organization, 1999) and it increases some disease probability such as heart disease, stroke, certain cancers and type 2 diabetes (National institutes of health, 1998). Adaptive behaviors play an important role in maintaining overall psychological health (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). Up to now, research on positive eating behaviors has been sparse and much remains unknown.…”