Moderate Emotion Effects on the Eating Styles of Obese Women with Mindful Eating
By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.
“There is so much stigma around weight, and judgement around right and wrong eating behavior, and good and bad food in our culture. Mindful eating fills in gaps in the traditional approach of discussing weight management.” – Lenna Liu
Obesity has become an epidemic in the industrialized world. In the U.S. the incidence of obesity, defined as a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 30 or above has more than doubled over the last 35 years to currently around 35% of the population, while two thirds of the population are considered overweight or obese (BMI > 25). Obesity has been found to shorten life expectancy by eight years and extreme obesity by 14 years. This occurs because obesity is associated with cardiovascular problems such as coronary heart disease and hypertension, stroke, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, cancer, arthritis, and others. Obviously, there is a need for effective treatments for overweight and obese individuals. But, despite copious research and a myriad of dietary and exercise programs, there still is no safe and effective treatment. Mindfulness is known to be associated with lower risk for obesity, alter eating behavior and improve health in obesity.
Mindful eating involves paying attention to eating while it is occurring, including attention to the sight, smell, flavors, and textures of food, to the process of chewing and may help reduce intake. Indeed, high levels of mindfulness are associated with lower levels of obesity and mindfulness training has been shown to reduce binge eating, emotional eating, and external eating. It is important to identify how mindful eating may alter the eating behaviors of obese individuals.
In today’s Research News article “The moderating effects of mindful eating on the relationship between emotional functioning and eating styles in overweight and obese women.” (See summary below or view the full text of the study at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7399674/ ) Czepczor-Bernat and colleagues recruited overweight and obese women and measured them for body size and had them complete measures of emotion regulation, mindful eating, eating styles, and positive and negative emotions. These data were subjected to regression analysis.
They found that the higher the level of mindful eating the lower the level of emotional eating and restrictive eating. They also found that the greater the emotion regulation the higher the restrictive eating but this relationship was amplified by mindful eating. In addition, the higher the levels of negative emotions the greater the levels of emotional eating and restrictive eating and again these relationships were moderated by mindful eating
These findings are correlational and as such causation cannot be determined. But the results suggest that mindful eating is associated with better eating styles and it moderates the effects of emotion regulation and negative emotions on eating styles. These results begin to reveal how mindful eating reduces food intake. These results further suggest that training in mindful eating may be particularly beneficial for overweight women who have high levels of negative emotions and low levels of emotion regulation.
So, moderate emotion effects on the eating styles of obese women with mindful eating.
“Applied to eating, mindfulness includes noticing the colors, smells, flavors, and textures of your food; chewing slowly; getting rid of distractions like TV or reading; and learning to cope with guilt and anxiety about food.” – Healthbeat
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies
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Study Summary
Czepczor-Bernat, K., Brytek-Matera, A., Gramaglia, C., & Zeppegno, P. (2020). The moderating effects of mindful eating on the relationship between emotional functioning and eating styles in overweight and obese women. Eating and weight disorders : EWD, 25(4), 841–849. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40519-019-00740-6
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of the current study was to examine the moderating effect of mindful eating on the relationship between emotional functioning and eating styles in overweight and obese women.
Methods
One hundred and eighty four overweight and obese adult women (BMI 30.12 ± 3.77 kg/m2) were assessed with the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale, the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, the Three Factor Eating Questionnaire and the Mindful Eating Scale.
Results
Mindful eating significantly moderated several of the relationships between emotional functioning and eating styles. At all levels of mindful eating, emotion dysregulation and negative affect are both associated with greater emotional eating, but with stronger associations for high levels of mindful eating. For people low in mindful eating, both emotion dysregulation and negative affect are associated with lower restrictive eating, and neither of them are associated with uncontrolled eating. For people high in mindful eating, neither emotion dysregulation nor negative affect are associated with restrictive eating, and only negative affect is associated with greater uncontrolled eating.
Conclusion
When mindful eating techniques are included as part of an intervention for overweight or obese individuals, it is even more important that those interventions should also include techniques to reduce emotion dysregulation and negative affect.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7399674/