The moderating effects of mindful eating on the relationship between emotional functioning and eating styles in overweight and obese women

Kamila Czepczor-Bernat,Anna Brytek-Matera,Carla Gramaglia,Patrizia Zeppegno

doi:10.1007/s40519-019-00740-6

Abstract

PurposeThe 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.MethodsOne 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.ResultsMindful 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.ConclusionWhen 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.Level of evidenceLevel V, descriptive study.

Highlights

According to epidemiological data, overweight and obesityrelated problems are increasing worldwide, because of the poor effectiveness of long-term treatment methods, with relevant consequences for the population’s health and healthcare costs [1,2,3,4]
Items 1–17 item are rated on a 4-point Likert scale (1–13: from 1—“definitely false” to 4—“definitely true”; 14: from 1—“only at meal times” to 4—“almost always”; 15: from 1—“almost never” to 4—“almost always”; 16: from 1—“unlikely” to 4—“very likely”; 17: from 1—“never” to 4—“at least once a week”), while item 18 is rated on an 8-point Likert scale
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

Summary

Introduction

Overweight and obesityrelated problems are increasing worldwide, because of the poor effectiveness of long-term treatment methods, with relevant consequences for the population’s health and healthcare costs [1,2,3,4]. Emotional dysregulation entails a poor ability to use emotions as an important source of information [17, 19, 20], and the consequent use of maladaptive coping patterns with negative emotions and stress [18], which may include regulation of emotional states by food intake (for instance: eating, overeating or restricting eating in response to emotions) [9, 21,22,23]. Emotional, uncontrolled and restrictive eating are problematic eating behaviours [24, 25], respectively, characterized by food intake independent of hunger and satiety feelings, but rather based on emotional stimuli [26,27,28]; overeating accompanied by a sense of lack of control [11, 29]; adoption of food restrictions aimed to control and manage body weight [30]. Problematic eating behaviours lead to the loss of natural and intuitive eating and difficulties in discriminating various emotions from a state of hunger or satiety [24, 27, 31], which can be treated and restored with the aid of mindfulness techniques [26, 32,33,34,35]

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