Mindfulness-based emotional eating awareness training: taking the emotional out of eating

Abstract

Purpose Emotional eating is important to study and address because it predicts poor outcome in weight loss interventions. Interventions have only touched the surface in terms of addressing emotional eating. Mindfulness approaches can address emotional eating by modification of emotion regulation and appetitive traits. The current study involved development of an emotional eating-specific mindfulness intervention and assessment of its effect on appetitive traits associated with emotional eating. Methods Participants (n = 14; age M = 29 years; 90% female) completed baseline and end-of-intervention self-report measures of emotional eating, food-cue reactivity, mindfulness, intuitive eating, emotional impulse regulation, stress, and a behavioural measure of inhibitory control. During the 6-week intervention, mindfulness meditation skills were taught weekly embedded in a psycho-educational curriculum about emotional eating. Results Paired t tests, controlled for type 1 error, revealed significant improvements in food-cue reactivity, intuitive eating, emotional impulse regulation, inhibitory control and stress (ps < 0.05; d: 0.58-1.54). Changes in emotional eating approached significance (p = 0.075, d = 0.66). Conclusion The intervention purposefully did not focus on weight loss and recruited participants who had self-declared difficulties with emotional eating. The positive outcomes suggest that intervening with mindfulness training before weight loss is attempted has the potential to change psychological factors that underpin overeating and undermine weight loss efforts.The study provides proof of principle as a basis to design a randomized control trial to assess rigorously the effectiveness of the intervention as a precursor to a weight loss intervention. Level of evidence Level IV, uncontrolled trial.

Emotional eating during COVID-19 in the United Kingdom: Exploring the roles of alexithymia and emotion dysregulation

“…Whilst other research designs are suited to mixed assessments of alexithymia via observer-reported alongside self-reported measures, online questionnaires can only make use of self-report measures. Furthermore, the emotional eating construct is multifaceted and influenced by context meaning it is not fully captured by questionnaire measures ( Lattimore, 2020 ). The present study utilised the EES and SEES which measure self-reported emotional eating urges and behaviours respectively, to garner a wider measurement of the emotional eating construct.…”

“…Eating in response to emotions can be positive for some individuals, as it is context-dependent ( Lattimore, 2020 ). It has been found to buffer the association between adverse life events and perceived stress, but only in individuals without elevated levels of depressive symptoms ( Finch & Tomiyama, 2015 ).…”

Eating Motives and Other Factors Predicting Emotional Overeating during COVID-19 in a Sample of Polish Adults

“…To sum up, during the COVID-19 pandemic, eating can, on the one hand, help to cope with the current difficult situation and the negative emotions associated with it; on the other hand, frequent use of this tendency can lead to rigid regulation of affect and use of this mechanism as the dominant mechanism [ 11 , 12 , 13 , 37 , 56 ]. Therefore, limited social contact, related disruptions in daily activities and stress resulting from COVID-19 should generate appropriate interventions, not necessarily focusing only on emotional eating, but also on the resources of the individual.…”

A Pragmatic Study of the Impact of a Brief Mindfulness Intervention on Prisoners and Staff in a Category B Prison and Men Subject to Community-Based Probation Supervision

“…The index known as SSRT has been used to indicate impulsivity (a lack of cognitive control) in prisoners (Bell & Polaschek, 2017). This index has also been used when assessing the impact of mindfulness in general population cohorts (Lattimore, 2020).…”

“…Studies have shown that within general population samples, engaging in “mindful breathing” can increase HRV (Burg et al, 2012), as can a 4-week mindfulness intervention (Shearer et al, 2016). In relation to cognitive control, behavioral measures gathered via computer based tasks have also been shown to be sensitive to change following mindfulness interventions in research examining “emotional eating” (Lattimore, 2020). Thus supplementing self-report with physiological (HRV) and computer based reaction time/accuracy assessment would enhance the robustness of the measurement available.…”