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

Paul Lattimore

doi:10.1007/s40519-019-00667-y

Abstract

PurposeEmotional 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.MethodsParticipants (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.ResultsPaired 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).ConclusionThe 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 evidenceLevel IV, uncontrolled trial.

Highlights

Emotional eating is a response to negative emotions: a “tendency to overeat in response to negative emotions, such as anxiety or irritability” [1] (p. 106)
Participants reported stronger tendency to respond to internal hunger and satiety signals and a stronger tendency to respond to physical sensations rather than emotional cues to eat
The current study presented a case for mindfulness training occurring before weight loss is attempted, to address psychological traits that underpin overeating and undermine weightloss efforts

Summary

Introduction

Emotional eating is a response to negative emotions: a “tendency to overeat in response to negative emotions, such as anxiety or irritability” [1] (p. 106). The emotional eating concept is not as simple as it seems and recent examination of how it is typically measured reveals it may reflect lack of control, learned cue reactivity, and misattribution of negative affect to episodic overeating [4]. In this respect the way emotional eating is currently measured may reflect ‘worry’ or ‘overconcern’ [4] that precedes disinhibited eating, the latter driven by learned hedonic cue-reactivity and weakened inhibitory control [14, 15] especially when intense emotions are active [16].

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Conclusion