Mindfulness, depression, and emotional eating: The moderating role of nonjudging of inner experience

Emotional eating is defined as the tendency to increase food consumption in order to modify negative emotional states. Theories on emotional eating attribute its cause to inadequate emotion regulation, specifically an inability to draw awareness to and accept distress. Mindfulness, or the ability to pay attention to and accept internal and external experiences, is thought to attenuate the association between internalizing distress and emotional eating. Nevertheless, there has been little research examining the moderating role of mindfulness in the relationship between psychological distress and emotional eating. The present study used a cross-sectional design to probe the effects of specific facets of mindfulness, as measured by the Five Factor Mindfulness Questionnaire, on the relationship between internalizing distress (i.e., depression and anxiety) and emotional eating in a diverse community sample (N = 248). Results showed that depression significantly interacted with nonjudging of inner experience to predict emotional eating. Those who were high in nonjudging endorsed less emotional eating than those who were average or low in nonjudging. This was significant only at low levels of depression. These findings delineate the moderating role of specific aspects of trait mindfulness in the association between depression and emotional eating and may inform more targeted intervention and prevention efforts.