Mindful Moments: How Body Scans Can Diminish Food Cravings for Emotional Eaters?

Craving is a common human trait, which is a natural response of our brain’s reward system that encourages us to engage in behaviours that satisfy our desires. How do you experience your cravings? Do they feel like hunger?

Sometimes, our emotions, such as sadness and stress, trigger cravings for food. This phenomenon is known as emotional eating. Emotional eating is the use of food to make yourself feel better – to satisfy an emotional need rather than to satisfy actual hunger. It is a way for the body to seek relief from unpleasant emotions. This study investigated the effects of a body scanning meditation, a form of mindfulness practice, on reducing negative effects and food cravings among emotional eaters.   CORE

• Body scanning meditation can reduce food cravings after negative emotions are induced in emotional eaters.
• A single mindfulness session can help emotional eaters improve their emotions and reduce food cravings, offering a more accessible option compared to longer-term training programs.
• Future longitudinal studies are needed to investigate the brief practice of body scanning meditation to draw long-term inferences about the benefits of body scanning on emotional eating.

  RESEARCH METHOD WHAT? This study used a pre-post randomized controlled design to test 1) whether emotional eaters in the body scanning mediation condition will report a greater reduction in negative affect and food cravings than emotional eaters in the control condition, 2) whether body boundaries, spatial frames of reference, and rumination have a mediating effect on the impact of body scanning meditation on negative affect, 3) whether mindfulness, equanimity, cognitive defusion, and interoceptive awareness have a moderating effect on the relation of body scanning meditation and negative affect or food cravings WHO? This study involved 81 adult participants (Mean age = 27) identified as emotional eaters, by scoring a mean of 3.25 or higher out of 5 on the Emotional Eating subscale of the Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire. HOW? Emotional eaters were randomly assigned to either the body scanning condition or the active control condition. Before coming to the laboratory, participants completed demographic and moderator measurements (e.g., eating behaviours, cognitive defusion, mindfulness). Participants first induced negative emotional states through a 20-25 minute interview. After the interview, they completed the pre-intervention measurements (i.e., perceived body frames of reference, negative affect, food cravings). After that, the body scanning condition was instructed to follow a body scanning meditation session using a voice recording, where the active control condition was instructed to listen to a recording about the human musculoskeletal system. After the intervention, participants completed the post-intervention measurements.   RESULTS

• The reduction in the intensity of food cravings and negative affect from pre to post was greater in the body scanning condition, compared to the active control condition.
• Ruminations or body boundaries, or spatial frames of reference, did not mediate the link between body scanning meditation and negative affect.
• Mindfulness or cognitive defusion or interoceptive awareness, or equanimity did not moderate the effect of body scan meditation on negative affect or food cravings.
• Further research is needed to explore more potential mediating and moderating factors on the relation between body scanning mediation on negative affect and/or food cravings.

  DETAILS Shireen, H., Milad, J., Dor-Ziderman, Y. et al. A Body Scan Meditation Reduces Negative Affect and Food Cravings in Emotional Eaters: A Randomized Controlled Study of the Effects, Mediators, and Moderators. Mindfulness 15, 189–202 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-023-02267-5   This sci-fly was written by Calorta Tan (Radboud University) for RAD-blog, the blog on smoking, alcohol, drugs and diet.