Examination of a Culturally Relevant Model of Intuitive Eating With African American College Women

Abstract

Intuitive eating is a non-diet approach to weight management that encourages people to eat desired food in response to internal signals of hunger and satiety (Tribole & Resch, 1995; Tylka, 2006). Avalos and Tylka (2006) developed a model of intuitive eating based on the objectification theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997) and theory of unconditional acceptance (Rogers, 1961; Rogers, 1964). Their model provided an adequate to excellent fit to data obtained from samples of young, mostly European American, college women and explained approximately 43% of variance in intuitive eating (Avalos & Tylka, 2006). The present study extended the work of Avalos and Tylka (2006) by exploring the model intuitive eating with a sample of African American college women. In addition, the present study extended the work of Avalos and Tylka (2006) by integrating culturally relevant variables (e.g., racial and ethnic identity) within the model to determine whether the addition of culturally relevant models accounted for additional variance in intuitive eating. Using path analysis procedures with a sample of 130 African American college women, the original model and culturally relevant alternative versions of the model provided an adequate to poor fit to the data. Although models provided an adequate to poor fit to the data, several of the proposed paths were upheld and the models accounted for a sizeable portion of the variance (e.g., approximately 35%). Results of the present study provide empirical support for several propositions underlying a model of intuitive eating (Avalos & Tylka, 2006) and previous iv research (Augustus-Horvath, 2008; Avalos & Tylka, 2006) that suggests several, but not all, model paths may extend and generalize to more diverse samples of women. v