Exploring the association between self-compassion, mindfulness and mindful eating with eating behaviours amongst patients with obesity

Abstract

Background: People who have obesity often experience problematic eating behaviours, contributing towards their excessive weight gain. Aims: Understanding problematic eating behaviours and their association to self-compassion, mindfulness and mindful eating is important for the development of future interventions that improve weight-loss and weight-regulation. Methods: One hundred and one participants attending their first session of a 6-session dietetic programme within a Tier 3 medical weight management service in the West Midlands, UK were recruited to complete questionnaires on self-compassion, mindfulness, mindful eating and eating behaviours, such as, emotional, restrained, external, fat and sugar consumption and grazing. Results: The findings suggested all three constructs, self-compassion, mindfulness and mindful eating were significantly and negatively associated with grazing and emotional eating, but mindful eating was the only construct that also displayed a significant and negative association with other eating behaviours that are often barriers to successful weight regulation, such as external eating and fat consumption. Further investigation suggested mindful eating had an indirect effect on fat consumption and grazing via external eating. Conclusion: Whilst, self-compassion, mindfulness and mindful eating displayed a negative relationship with grazing and emotional eating, mindful eating also displayed a negative relationship with fat consumption and external eating. Possible explanations and directions for future work are discussed with an emphasis on the need for more empirical work.

Development and initial validation of the trait and state Mindful Eating Behaviour Scales

“…For example, mindful eating sub-scales have related differently to disordered eating (i.e., positive and negative relationships) [ 16 ]. Furthermore, mindful eating showed no relationship to mindfulness, and only in some studies related to self-compassion [ 17 – 19 ] when there is an expectation for mindful eating to consistently relate to both mindfulness and self-compassion. Mantzios [ 7 , 8 ] highlighted the need for simplicity in the field, arguing for the need for aligning principles of secular mindfulness practice when defining mindful eating.…”