An Eight-Week Mindful Eating Program Applied in a Mediterranean Population With Overweight or Obesity: The EATT Intervention Study

Abstract

Background Overweight and obesity are important public health priorities. Mindful eating can contribute in preventing automatic eating behavior and emotional dysregulation, both being primary causes of overeating and negative body image. This research outlines an eight-week mindful eating intervention (i.e., project EATT) focusing on people with overweight or obesity in assisting positive behavioral, psychological and physiological change. Methods Fifty-seven people residing in Athens were recruited to participate in this research, where participants were allocated to either an experimental or a waitlist condition. Changes in body weight, and eating attitude, mindfulness, self-compassion, anxiety questionnaires were administered at baseline and post-intervention, and at a 14-month follow-up. Results Results indicated that mindfulness and self-compassion increased significantly, while anxiety symptoms decreased. Significance was also observed in reduction of overeating symptoms and oral control. While a negative relationship was observed between anxiety and mindfulness, and anxiety and self-compassion, self-compassion was negatively associated with overeating episodes. Conclusions The intervention improved participants’ relationship with food and enabled changes towards successful weight regulation.

Advancing the assessment of mindful eating: Exploring the psychometric properties and validating the mindful eating behaviour scale in English

“…Together, focused eating and eating with awareness are two essential components of mindful eating behaviour, and should be used separately to propose the behavioural impact of the MEBS, as they may be more significant in predicting health outcomes (Franssen et al, 2020; Mantzios, 2020; Mantzios and Giannou, 2019). Hunger and satiety cues, as well as eating without distraction, represent elements that are taught in mindful eating programmes (Kristeller and Wolever, 2010; Zervos et al, 2022), but are not intrinsically elements of the eating behaviour, rest on decision making for mindful eating, and may have a different contribution altogether to health outcomes and weight regulation. Decision making for mindful eating and mindful eating behaviour should be explored separately with the MEBS, and beyond the scale, to reliably report the potential of mindful eating as a behaviour that is underpinned as a mindfulness practice.…”

Orthorexia nervosa, mindful eating, and perfectionism: an exploratory investigation

“…ME assists in the gradual change from external motivations to eat to internal motivations such as hunger when participating in ME interventions [46], promoting healthier eating behaviours [50,[52][53][54]79], including an increased intake of fruit and vegetables [22,26], and reductions in high sugar and energy dense food consumption [51,56]. Research has also found a negative association between ME and motivations to eat palatable foods such as coping and social conformity [39,45], fat and sugar consumption [48], and grazing [47,49].…”

The Challenges of Eating Well for People Living with Cystic Fibrosis: an Interview Study Exploring the Use of Mindful Eating Approaches and Behaviours to Support Optimal Nutritional Status

“…Mindful eating has been found to increase the pleasure in eating, while simultaneously supporting a reduction in fat and sugar consumption, grazing, impulsive food choice, compulsive eating and motivations to eat for any other reason apart from internal feelings of hunger and satiety [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]. The positive outcomes have also led to several programmes targeting mindful eating, such as the Mindfulness-Based Eating Awareness Training (MB-EAT) [31] and the Mindful Eating and Living (MEAL) [32], where people suffering from other chronic conditions such as type 2 diabetes [33], chronic kidney disease [34] and obesity [30,35] benefited in improving health behaviours and outcomes.…”