The role of self compassion and mindful eating in predicting eating attitudes

With the increase in the diagnosis of eating disorders in recent years, eating attitudes have been frequently investigated in the non-clinical sample. While mindful eating is known as a predictor of eating attitudes, it is known that self-compassion, which is a newly introduced concept in the literature, is closely related to mindful eating and eating attitudes. The aim of this study is to investigate the predictive role of self-compassion and mindful eating in eating attitudes in women who go to a dietitian and who do not. The sample of the study consisted of 435 female participants who voluntarily agreed to participate in the study, aged between 18-59 (M. = 31.65, SD. = 9.31), 230 (52.9%) and not 205 dieticians (47.1%). In addition to the Sociodemographic Information and Data Form, the survey battery created with the Eating Attitude Test (EAT), the MindfulEatingQuestionnare (MEQ) and the Self-Compassion Scale (SCS) and presentedonline. Descriptive analyzes, independent groups t-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to evaluate the relationship between sociodemographic variables and eating attitudes, and hierarchical regression analysis was carried out with IBM SPSS 22.0 program to test the research hypotheses. According to the findings, it was found that the roles of self-compassion and mindful eating differ in individuals who go to the dietitian and those who do not, while mindful eating and self-compassion predict eating attitudes in women who go to dietitian to lose weight, while mindful eating and self-compassion do not have a predictive role in women who do not go to a dietitian. This difference observed in the sample groups highlights the importance of investigating these predictors in preventing eating disorders, noting that there are different predictors of eating attitudes between the risk group and the general population.