Clinical trial NCT05347914: Mindfulness App for Reducing Food Cravings
Official title: Mobile Mindfulness Intervention to Reduce Non-Homeostatic Food Cravings in Emotional Eaters: Research Pilot
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: Emotional Eating
Lead sponsor: McGill University
Sponsor class: OTHER
First posted: 2022-04-26
Enrollment: 49
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Standard ages: ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: NA
Intervention model: SINGLE_GROUP
Primary purpose: TREATMENT

Brief summary: More than half of Canadian are overweight or obese and over fifty percent of individuals who are obese are emotional eaters. Emotional eating is defined as the tendency to eat in response to negative emotions and can be understood as reward-based eating behavior that is reinforced by modern obesogenic environments. Over time, food-related cues can interfere with reward-based learning processes such that an individual develops a conditioned response to eat for reasons that are not associated with physiological hunger. Mindfulness has the potential to act on the reward-base habit loop of emotional eating. One potential target is cravings or the urges to eat. This can be targeted using the mindfulness exercise called "RAIN" which calls for individuals to (1) Recognize and name their craving, to (2) Acknowledge its presence and to give it space to "be"; (3) then Investigate and bring an attitude of curiosity to their experience - Where did these feelings comes from? Have I felt this way before? then (4) Not-identify with your experience- that is, remind yourself that although your craving or urge to eat is very powerful, it only makes up a small part of who you are. The aim of the study is to therefore test a pilot intervention that implements a targeted mindfulness-based exercise (RAIN), using a mobile app, to attenuate the relationship between feeling a negative internal state (affect) and eating.


Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

1. Adults (age \> 18 years) who meet criteria for emotional eating
2. Demonstrate a lack of control over eating
3. High levels of preoccupation with food

Exclusion Criteria:

1. Having been pregnant in the past six months or planning on becoming pregnant in the next year
2. currently undergoing treatment for cancer
3. using medication that affects body weight or appetite
4. being diagnosed with Bulimia Nervosa, Binge Eating Disorder, currently active Major Depression, or other psychiatric illnesses that may affect appetite.
5. Participants must also be proficient in English
6. Own a smartphone

Primary outcomes:
measure: Change in food-related cravings
timeFrame: Baseline, week 6
measure: Change in emotional eating
timeFrame: Baseline, week 6
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Change in feelings of control around eating
timeFrame: Baseline, week 6
measure: Change in overidentification with food cravings
timeFrame: Baseline, week 6
measure: Change in reactivity towards eating related experiences
timeFrame: Baseline, week 6
measure: Change in judgment towards eating related experiences
timeFrame: Baseline, week 6
measure: Change in capacity to tolerate distress
timeFrame: Baseline, week 6
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Montreal
country: Canada
facility: McGill University
state: Please Select...
city: Montreal
country: Canada
facility: McGill University
state: Quebec
Study officials:
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