The study of the relationship between self compassion, eating attitude, food choices and body mass index

There are limited researches examining the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and self compassion on the basis of eating attitudes and food choices, the factors affecting body weight. In the current cross-sectional study, the relationship of self-compassion, eating attitude, energy dense food choices and BMI in adult participants (n = 177) were investigated. Results have indicated that there was no statistically significant relationship between self-compassion and body mass index. It has been revealed that total self-compassion score and common humanity were negatively correlated with uncontrolled eating, and cognitive restraint had positive correlation with self-judgment; while it was found inversely related to common humanity. Increasing self compassion level was inversely related to consumption of fizy drinks. Aditionally, it has been found that higher self compassion scores were related with decreasing consumption of some of bakery products, fatty and sugary foods and also some of packaged foods while those corelations were not statistically significant. The negative correlations of uncontrolled eating, emotional eating and cognitive restraint with BMI have changed with exercise status. While emotional eating and uncontrolled eating were found positively correlated with the consumption frequency of some of the energy dense foods, cognitive restraint subscale exhibited inverse relations with consumption frequency of particular energy dense foods. In adidion there were no significant correlations between BMI and consumption frequency of any food has been querried in this study. In the current study, the relationships between self-compassion, eating attitude, food choices and body mass index have been identified and these findings will shed light on the way of professionals of this field in the development of behavioural weight management interventions well-defined in terms of psychological factors. Keywords: Self Compassion, Eating Attitude, Food Choices, BMI, Weight Management