Abstract:
Dispositional mindfulness is "a non-judgmental state of purposeful
awareness that brings attention to the present moment and allows
for recognizing and considering internal and external experiences
without the pressure to alter the moment or take action". Eating
behaviors are classified as restrained, emotional, and external
eating. External eating alludes to uncontrollable eating when food
triggers such as favourite snacks or sweets are present. Emotional
eating is when a person consumes an excessive amount of food in
response to negative emotions or negative psychological moods.
Restricted eating results in a person eating less food or feeling
guilty after eating as a result of being overly concerned with their
body weight or shape. In this review, a literature search was
performed on PubMed with the keywords "Dispositional
Mindfulness" and “eating”. Six out of the sixteen papers met the
selection criteria. The literature shows that high dispositional
mindfulness levels are related to reduced emotional and
uncontrolled external eating irrespective of the clinical variables
put in place by each study. The negative psychological mood was
associated with reduced dispositional mindfulness, which led to an
increased emotional and external eating rate. Substance abuse is
another factor that leads to low dispositional mindfulness levels.
High levels of dispositional mindfulness are related to frequent
exercise and high sleep quality. The review demonstrates that
interventions that promote dispositional mindfulness can be
utilized to treat persons who engage in negative eating
behaviours.
