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Mindless and Mindful Eating and Its Impact on Physical and Mental Health
Abstract
Health is important to all human beings, but everybody realized it only after the recent pandemic due to COVID-19. Food is an important item to maintain good health. But, sometimes, other factors like the environment, be it at the domestic front or the workplace, also influence your mental and physical health. Due to stress from external factors, we may do mindless eating sometimes that will spoil our health later. On the other hand, mindful eating can lead to a greater psychological wellbeing. Research has proved that mindful eating is good for both physical and mental health, whereas mindless eating spoils our health. The authors have conducted a survey to understand the awareness of mindful and mindless eating and their impact on individual's health – both physical as well as mental health. It was recommended that one has to follow “food life balance,” just like “work life balance,” in order to be healthy to take-up the responsibilities of personal life as well as the career.
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Objective
This study aimed to evaluate the relationship between adherence to the Mediterranean diet (MD), mindful eating, environmental beliefs, and obesity in children.
Materials and Methods
The study included 318 children (50.6% male, 49.4% female, 10.0 ± 0.73 years old). Data were obtained using survey and a face-to-face interview method. The questionnaire includes general information, anthropometric measurements, the New Ecological Paradigm Scale for Children (NEP), the Mediterranean Diet Quality Index for children and adolescents (KIDMED), and the Mindful Eating Questionnaire for Children.
Results
According to the KIDMED classification, 52.5% of the children were in the group that needs improvement, 35.2% were in the low diet quality group, and 12.3% were in the optimal MD group. The Mindless score was higher in overweight/obese children compared to the normal body mass index (BMI) group (P < .05). Awareness, NEP, and KIDMED scores were the lowest in overweight/obese children (P < .05). In regression analysis, the father’s age, KIDMED, and Awareness scores related to NEP scores positively (R ²: 0.545, P < .001). Also, children’s body mass index-related KIDMED scores negatively, and awareness and NEP scores related KIDMED scores positively (R ²: 0.276, P < .001).
Conclusion
Our results show that higher adherence to the MD is associated with higher environmental beliefs. Children with higher mindful eating have higher environmental beliefs and adherence to the MD, and these scores are lower in obese children. Therefore, raising generations that adopt sustainable diet models and have high environmental awareness is necessary. This research provides significant findings for future clinical studies on children’s body weight maintenance and sustainability.
Background. Mindful eating (ME), defined as a “non-judgmental awareness of bodily and emotional sensations regarding food consumption”, may be a promising strategy to promote healthy eating behaviors. However, little is known about the psychosocial factors and underlying beliefs that explain ME adoption.
Methods. Participants (N = 282; Mean age = 43.2) responded to an online questionnaire based on the I-Change Model. Groups with different frequencies of prior engagement in ME, i.e., low (n = 82; LME), medium (n = 96), and high (n = 104), were compared via (M)ANOVAs on factors and individual beliefs regarding predisposing (i.e., habits, experience with mindfulness, emotional eating, facets of ME), pre-motivational (i.e., knowledge, behavioral cognizance, risk perception, cues to action), and motivational factors (i.e., attitudes, self-efficacy, social influence) as well as their intentions and action planning. Bivariate correlations and a forward-stepwise regression with ICM constructs were conducted to examine model fit.
Results. LME had a greater habit of mindless eating and significantly lower internal awareness, cognizance, cues, and less favorable attitudes, self-efficacy, engagement and support by their social environment, intention, and action plans about engaging in ME than the other two groups. Less habitual mindless eating, and greater experience, internal awareness, cognizance, susceptibility, support, and intention explained 54% of the variance in ME.
Discussion. Results indicate that individuals need to be treated differently when promoting ME with respect to their psychosocial characteristics, rather than as a single group with homogenous baseline beliefs, abilities, support, and motivation. Future longitudinal research should examine which determinants are predictors of ME to better tailor program contents.
Continual exposure to energy dense foods is suggested to promote overeating and obesity. The aim of the present research was to explore whether or not mindfulness could reduce visual attention towards food cues. In two laboratory studies, participants with a normal weight range completed an eye-tracking paradigm, and their eye-movements were recorded. In study 1, participants were exposed to either mindfulness meditation or a control condition, and their eye-movements towards low energy density (LED) vs high energy density (HED) food cues were measured. In study 2, participants were assigned to a mindful eating condition using a Mindful Construal Diary (MCD) or a control condition, and their eye-movements towards LED or HED food vs. non-food cues were recorded. In study 1, participants in the mindfulness meditation condition had greater attention duration towards LED food cues, whilst those in the control condition exhibited greater attention duration towards HED food cues. In study 2, there were no significant differences in the maintenance of attentional biases towards food cues between the two conditions. Mindfulness meditation may be beneficial in increasing attention towards LED food cues. Future research should further explore the effect of mindfulness and mindful eating on visual attention towards food cues with people who suffer from excess weight or have obesity, and also within naturalistic settings.
Mindful eating is increasingly being used to try to promote healthy eating and weight management. However, the term refers to a diverse set of practices that could have quite different effects on behaviour. This narrative review provides a guide to the concept of mindful eating as well as a comprehensive overview of research in the area. This includes the ways in which mindful eating has been operationalised and measured as well as evidence for effects and potential mechanisms of action. The research reviewed suggests that multi‐component mindfulness‐based interventions may be beneficial for disordered eating and weight management, but it is unclear whether these benefits exceed those obtained by alternative treatments. Some studies suggest that specific mindful eating strategies may have immediate effects on eating, but more research is needed to reach any definitive conclusions. These studies also suggest that effects may vary depending on the characteristics of the individual and/or the specific eating context. As such, research may ultimately point towards a more personalised approach to the application of mindful eating in order to maximise benefits. Finally, mindful eating interventions for children represent a relatively new area of research and there is currently insufficient evidence to draw any firm conclusions about their value. To advance both our understanding and effective application of mindful eating, more experimental research with high levels of methodological rigour is needed as well as research that explores underpinning mechanisms of action.
Mindful eating behavior and self-compassion have been individually shown to contribute to healthy eating. Evidence suggests that they may interact and that interaction may increase our understanding of eating behavior. The aim of the current study was to explore the relationship between mindful eating behavior, self-compassion, healthy/unhealthy weight, eating disorder and wellbeing in a sample of university students. An online survey using questionnaire data collection in a sample of 349 students (105 males and 244 females). Variables measured included body mass index (BMI), mindful eating behavior, eating attitudes, self-compassion and mental wellbeing. Regression and path analysis show mindful eating behavior and self-compassion to individually and interaction predict eating attitudes and wellbeing. BMI was shown to have a curvilinear relationship with mindful eating behavior, self-compassion and wellbeing with both the underweight and obese reporting lower self-compassion, less Mindful eating behavior, lower wellbeing and more likely to exhibit disordered eating. These results indicate that self-compassion and mindful eating behavior might be usefully targeted in interventions to prevent both obesity and eating disorder.
Objectives
Regularly choosing unhealthy energy-dense foods can have negative health consequences. The present study tested whether a mindful eating–specific tool, namely Mindful Construal Reflection (MCR), would promote healthier eating behaviors.
Methods
Eighty-five university students were randomly assigned to either a mindfulness or control condition and were served M&Ms and grapes as an unhealthy and healthy option respectively.
Results
Participants in the mindfulness condition consumed significantly less M&Ms than those in the control condition, but no significant differences were found in the consumption of grapes between the two conditions. Furthermore, control participants ate significantly more M&Ms when displaying some hunger compared to those presenting no hunger, and although participants in the mindfulness condition also ate more when displaying some hunger, this did not reach statistical significance.
Conclusions
Together, these results suggest that the MCR may be effective in reducing consumption of unhealthy energy-dense foods. However, future research is warranted in developing the MCR to encourage consumption of healthier food options.
Background
Research into dieting and mindfulness has primarily focused upon how mindfulness and mindful eating affect dieting. However, the effect is bi-directional, with the process of dieting also impacting on mind-set and eating. We therefore aimed to investigate how people on different diets experience mindfulness and mindful eating. The present research aimed to explore whether or not specific weight loss diets are likely to prompt more of the elements described in mindfulness and mindful eating theory.
Participants and procedure
A community sample (N = 312) who were dieting at the time of recruitment were asked to fill in mindfulness and mindful eating measures, where commercial weight loss programmes (CWLP), low carbohydrate (LC), and intermittent fasting (IF) were used as dieting methods, as well as general healthy eating (GHE). Analyses of variance were conducted with the intention of comparing those groups in mindfulness and mindful eating, as well as their corresponding sub-constructs. The questionnaires and demographic information were provided through an online database, as well as other information relating to the diet, duration and history of dieting.
Results
The results showed intermittent fasting dieters to score higher across mindfulness and mindful eating scores, although the differences from the rest of the groups were not significant. Investigating mindful eating further through the subscales revealed that CWLP scores were significantly higher in ‘routine’ when compared to GHE. Trait mindfulness subscales displayed no significant differences, except ‘describe’, which was higher in CWLP over LC dieting.
Conclusions
Specific emphasis is given to future directions, and the potential to identify diets that are theoretically and prac-tically consistent with the theory and practices of mindfulness and mindful eating.
Background: Defining mindful eating and discussing all it entails has proven to be abstract, open-ended and biased to the interpretation of the researchers and authors in the field. Despite some consensus, different interpretations have led to different psychometric tools and practices not descriptive of mindful eating, contributing towards a replication crisis. Aim/Method: This narrative review will draw on the most appropriate definition of mindful eating in the framework of traditional secular mindfulness literature and discuss how mindful eating psychometrics and practices are unsuitable for precise research. Results/Discussion: A proposal and directive of separation between eating behaviours and decision-making in mindful eating as a way of developing evidence-based practices and psychometric tools are proposed for both clinical and non-clinical use.
The family environment, which involves parent eating behaviors and feeding practices, influences child intake and eating behaviors. Specifically, parental emotional eating or emotional feeding practices may lead to emotional eating in the child. Mindful eating practices may decrease emotional eating behaviors. The purpose of this narrative review was to investigate the influence of parental mindful eating on emotional eating behaviors of their children or adolescents. A secondary purpose of this review was to determine whether a family-based or child mindful eating intervention improves child emotional eating directly or through the improvements of the parent and parental role modeling. EBSCOhost was utilized to simultaneously search five databases. The search was limited to full-text, peer reviewed articles, in the English language. Seven studies, four cross-sectional studies and three intervention studies, were identified. Across studies, measures of mindful and emotional eating differed. Among the cross-sectional studies, parental mindful eating/feeding or mindful parenting were either directly or indirectly related to decreased emotional eating in the child or adolescent. The effect was unclear among the intervention studies; however, these studies were pilot feasibility studies. Overall, parental mindful eating is associated with emotional eating behaviors among children and adolescents. Additional studies, with a randomized controlled design are needed to evaluate parent mindful eating interventions on child and adolescent eating behaviors. Additionally, future trials need to use similar validated measures to ensure consistent quality data collection and allow for comparison of findings across studies.
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.
Background
Mindful eating has exceeded two decades of scientific enquiry but defining mindful eating has proven to be quite challenging.
Aim
The inability to clearly define mindful eating led to variations in the description in academic and clinical literature, different psychometric tools and the development of a field that is lacking the preciseness that is needed to advance mindful eating – and the associated interventions – onto a level that is simple to comprehend and implement in practice.
Methods
Drawing from traditional and contemporary mindfulness and mindful eating literature, this manuscript will attempt to define and describe mindful eating in the context of eating behaviours.
Results
The review of the literature has resulted in challenging areas around the main principles that should be included in defining the term mindful eating, and highlights the distinction between mindfulness and mindful eating, as well as behaviour and decision making within the context of mindful eating.
Conclusion
In a field that is lacking transparency and methodological rigour, mindful eating behaviour is detailed as a new beginning in conducting precise experimental research and evidence-based interventions for clinical and non-clinical use.
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