Psychological flexibility and mindfulness explain intuitive eating in overweight adults

The current study investigated whether mindfulness and psychological flexibility, independently

and together, explain intuitive eating. The participants were overweight or obese persons (N = 306)

reporting symptoms of perceived stress and enrolled in a psychological lifestyle intervention study.

Participants completed self-report measures of psychological flexibility, mindfulness including the

subscales Observe, Describe, Act with awareness, Non-react and Non-judgment, and intuitive

eating including the subscales Unconditional permission to eat, Eating for physical reasons, and

Reliance on hunger/satiety cues. Psychological flexibility and mindfulness were positively

associated with intuitive eating factors. The results suggest that mindfulness and psychological

flexibility are related constructs that account for some of the same variance in intuitive eating, but

they also account for significant unique variances in intuitive eating. The present results indicate

that non-judgment can explain the relationship between general psychological flexibility and

unconditional permission to eat as well as eating for physical reasons. On the other hand,

mindfulness skills—acting with awareness, observing, and non-reacting—explained reliance on

hunger/satiety cues independently from general psychological flexibility. These findings suggest

that mindfulness and psychological flexibility are interrelated but not redundant constructs and that

both may be important for understanding regulation processes underlying eating behavior.