Nutritional Counseling Based on Mindful Eating for the Eating Behavior of People Living with Overweight and Obesity: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Objectives: This study aimed to evaluate the effect of a counseling approach based on Mindful Eating on the eating behavior of individuals living with overweight and obesity.

Methods: A 16-week randomized clinical trial was conducted to compare an online group intervention (IG) with individual online nutritional counseling (TAU). Volunteers ( = 61), aged 18 or older with BMI ≥ 25 kg/m, were randomly assigned to the two groups and invited to participate in eight biweekly sessions. Eating behavior was assessed using the Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire (TFEQ-21), and anthropometric measures were collected through self-report. Comparison between the groups was performed using generalized linear models and Poisson models with robust variance estimators. A sensitivity analysis was conducted to evaluate the group-by-time interaction. The study was approved by the UFCSPA Ethics Committee.

Results: At baseline, the eating behavior domain with the highest mean score was emotional eating (EE) in both groups. At the end of the study, all domains decreased, while an increase in cognitive restraint (CR) was observed in the TAU group, showing a difference between the groups (-23.1; 95%CI -37.7 to -8.5; = 0.004). A group-by-time interaction difference was noted only in the CR domain, explained by the change in the TAU group for the CR comparison before and after treatment and by the difference between the IG and TAU groups at the end of the treatment period.

Conclusions: A Mindful Eating approach may aid in managing dysfunctional cognitive restraint, a key component for sustainable excess weight treatment. The protocol can be found on ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT05845411).