Testing the Acceptance Model of Intuitive Eating With College Women Athletes

Abstract

Intuitive eating is an adaptive eating style that involves eating for physical rather than emotional reasons, reliance on internal hunger and satiety cues, and lack of restriction in eating. In our study, the authors tested the acceptance model of intuitive eating with 160 college women athletes from Division I and Division II schools, using path analysis and controlling for body mass index. Similar to a previous study with general college women, the model provided an excellent fit to the data. These results support the hypothesis that perceived acceptance from others indirectly contributes to intuitive eating through college women athletes' attitudes toward their bodies. For college women athletes, body acceptance by coaches, trainers, and teammates predicted athletes' own body appreciation, which in turn, predicted their eating style. These findings suggest ways for coaches and counselors to help women athletes enhance their body appreciation and improve their eating. These results also indicate the need for researchers to further explore women athletes' eating styles and attitudes toward their bodies.

Turkish version of the Intuitive Eating Scale-2: Validity and reliability among university students

“…(AugustusHorvath & Tylka, 2011;Oh, Wiseman, Hendrickson, Phillips, & Hayden, 2012;Tylka & Kroon Van Diest, 2013). The body dissatisfaction (EDE-Q-shape concern) and BAS-2 scores was strongly correlated with IES-2 scores in our study.…”

The Intuitive Eating Scale–2: Item refinement and psychometric evaluation with college women and men.

“…Many studies have supported the construct validity of its scores with women. For example, studies with women between 18 and 65 years of age have consistently found that the IES total and subscale scores are (a) negatively associated with disordered eating symptoms (Shouse & Nilsson, 2011;Tylka, 2006;Tylka & Wilcox, 2006), thin-ideal internalization (Tylka, 2006), body mass index (Augustus-Horvath & Tylka, 2011;Dittmann & Freedman, 2009;Kroon Van Diest & Tylka, 2010), and self-silencing (Shouse & Nilsson, 2011) as well as (b) positively associated with body appreciation (Augustus-Horvath & Tylka, 2011;Avalos & Tylka, 2006;Dittmann & Freedman, 2009;Kroon Van Diest & Tylka, 2010;Oh, Wiseman, Hendrickson, Phillips, & Hayden, 2012). The IES has also been positively associated with measures of psychological well-being, such as optimism, proactive coping, general life satisfaction, and self-esteem (Tylka, 2006;Tylka & Wilcox, 2006) as well as awareness and acceptance of emotions and different emotional states (Shouse & Nilsson, 2011).…”

Future directions for positive body image research

“…Body appreciation is also positively associated with intuitive eating (Avalos & Tylka, 2006;Hahn Oh, Wiseman, Hendrickson, Phillips, & Hayden, 2012), sexual functioning (Satinsky, Reece, Dennis, Sanders, & Bardzell, 2012), and physical activity, when the motive to exercise is not appearance-based (Homan & Tylka, 2014).…”