"The basic premise of intuitive eating is, rather than manipulate what we eat in terms of prescribed diets -- how many calories a food has, how many grams of fat, specific food combinations or anything like that -- we should take internal cues, try to recognize what our body wants and then regulate how much we eat based on hunger and satiety," said lead researcher Steven Hawks, a BYU professor of health science, who adopted an intuitive eating lifestyle several years ago and lost 50 pounds as a result.
In a small-scale study to be published in the Nov. 18 issue of the "American Journal of Health Education," Hawks and his team of researchers -- Hala Madanat, Jaylyn Hawks and Ashley Harris -- identified a handful of college students who are naturally intuitive eaters and compared them with other students who aren't. Participants were then tested to determine how healthy they were.
As measured by the Intuitive Eating Scale, developed by Hawks and others to measure the degree to which a per --on is an intuitive eater, researchers found that intuitive eating was significantly correlated with lower body mass index, lower triglyceride levels, higher levels of high density lipoproteins and decreased risk of cardiovascular disease.
Approximately one-third of the variance in body mass index was accounted for by intuitive eating scores, while 17 to 19 percent of the variance in blood lipid profiles and cardiovascular risk was accounted for by intuitive eating.
"The findings provide support for intuitive eating as a positive approach to healthy weight management," said Hawks, who plans to do a large-scale study of intuitive eating across several cultures.
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Contact: Grant Madsen
grant_madsen@byu.edu
801-422-9206
Brigham Young University
21-Nov-2005