Elsevier

Appetite

Volume 160, 1 May 2021, 105089
Appetite

Mindfulness, depression, and emotional eating: The moderating role of nonjudging of inner experience

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2020.105089Get rights and content

Abstract

Emotional eating is defined as the tendency to increase food consumption in order to modify negative emotional states. Theories on emotional eating attribute its cause to inadequate emotion regulation, specifically an inability to draw awareness to and accept distress. Mindfulness, or the ability to pay attention to and accept internal and external experiences, is thought to attenuate the association between internalizing distress and emotional eating. Nevertheless, there has been little research examining the moderating role of mindfulness in the relationship between psychological distress and emotional eating. The present study used a cross-sectional design to probe the effects of specific facets of mindfulness, as measured by the Five Factor Mindfulness Questionnaire, on the relationship between internalizing distress (i.e., depression and anxiety) and emotional eating in a diverse community sample (N = 248). Results showed that depression significantly interacted with nonjudging of inner experience to predict emotional eating. Those who were high in nonjudging endorsed less emotional eating than those who were average or low in nonjudging. This was significant only at low levels of depression. These findings delineate the moderating role of specific aspects of trait mindfulness in the association between depression and emotional eating and may inform more targeted intervention and prevention efforts.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants were a sample of 248 individuals (55.6% female) ranging from 18.1 to 34.8 years of age (M = 25.5, SD = 3.8, Median = 26.1) who were recruited online through Qualtrics Panels. Inclusion criteria included being 18 years of age or older, and ability to read and write in English. Participants were two thirds (67.7%) White; 23.0% African American; 1.6% American Indian or Alaska Native; 4.8% Asian; and 2.8% Multiracial. Of these, 2.9% reported that their ethnicity was Hispanic or Latino.

Descriptive statistics

Descriptive statistics for all main study variables, including means, standard deviations, and ranges are presented in Table 1. The demographic characteristics of race, and income were not associated with any of the variables of interest (all p values < .05). As a result, these demographic variables were not included in any of the subsequent models.

Depression

First we examined the main effects of, and interactions between, depression symptoms and the five facets of the FFMQ (see Table 2). Results indicate

Discussion

The present study was a replication and extension of a study conducted by Pidgeon et al. (2013) that investigated the moderating role of trait mindfulness in the relationship between psychological distress and emotional eating. In contrast to Pidgeon and colleagues’ use of the MAAS, the current study utilized the FFMQ; a multidimensional measure of trait mindfulness with five distinct factors (observing, describing, acting with awareness, nonjudging, and nonreactivity).

We first hypothesized

Declaration of competing interest

None.

Acknowledgments

This research was funded in part by a Plumeri Award for Faculty Excellence to the second author. The authors would like to acknowledge Dr. Adrian J. Bravo and Dr. Xiaowen Xu for their insightful feedback on the manuscript, and KC David, Samantha Cooper, and Claire Peterson for their help with data collection and entry.

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    Author Note. Ti Hsu is now at the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Iowa.

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