Mindfulness meditation as an intervention for body image and weight management in college women: A pilot study

Behavioral weight loss treatment is a well-established and highly effective intervention for many overweight individuals seeking to lose weight. Some overweight individuals enter weight loss treatment programs to improve their body image as well as to lose weight. Changes in body weight, however, have been shown to be unrelated to changes in body image suggesting that weight loss alone is not sufficient for alleviating body image concerns. Mindfulness, a meditation-based therapeutic process emphasizing a nonjudgmental, self-accepting attitude, has been shown to be an effective intervention across a wide range of clinical syndromes and populations, but has never been examined as an intervention for body image and weight management in young women. Our study used a randomized design to test the effectiveness of a mindfulness-based intervention in combination with a behavioral weight loss treatment protocol on changes in body image, psychological well-being, eating behavior, and weight.;Forty-one women aged 18 to 25 with a BMI between 25 and 35 were randomized into one of two conditions: standard behavioral treatment or standard behavioral treatment plus mindfulness. The study consisted of an 8-week intervention phase and a 3-month follow-up phase. Twenty-three participants (56%) completed pre-treatment, post-treatment, and follow-up assessment. The primary outcome measure was body image satisfaction. Secondary outcomes included self-esteem, depressive symptoms, anxiety, binge eating, and weight. Participants in both conditions showed improvements. Specifically, body image satisfaction improved significantly from baseline to post-treatment (p < .001) and showed marginal, but nonsignificant, improvement from baseline to follow-up (p = .053). Self-esteem, depressive symptoms, and anxiety also improved from baseline to post-treatment (all p’s < .005) and from baseline to follow-up (all p’s < .008). Binge eating showed nonsignificant improvement from baseline to post-treatment (p = .08) and significant improvement from baseline to follow-up (p = .009). Weight decreased from baseline to post-treatment (p = .03) and from baseline to follow-up (p = .002). Neither condition regained any weight on average at the 3-month follow-up. Contrary to prediction, standard treatment plus mindfulness did not produce greater improvements than standard treatment alone. Further study of mindfulness-based interventions utilizing a larger sample size and longer follow-up is warranted.