Your Body Is Your Home: Using Intuitive Eating to Foster Positive Health Outcomes in Early Adolescents

Intuitive eating (IE) is an approach to eating and self-care characterised by an awareness of somatic bodily cues. IE stipulates that somatic cues should be used to guide decisions relating to food, eating, and caring for the body. IE has been extensively studied in adult populations. However, while research suggests that developing intuitive eating may help prevent disordered eating among adults, studies in early adolescence are lacking, notably in terms of descriptive data, measurement, and potential efficacy. Broadly, initial cross-sectional evidence suggests that IE in adolescence is associated with better physical health, psychological health, and psychosocial functioning. However, as it stands the popularity of this framework for adolescents outpaces the research base supporting its use in health promotion. Thus, this thesis presents a series of studies designed to further explore the potential utility of IE in mitigating poorer outcomes in early adolescents, such as psychological distress, DE, and body image disturbances. In the interest of broadening the research base for IE in early adolescence, five studies were conducted. The first study, a systematic review, explored the scope and efficacy of prior interventional work. The following two studies were focused on the psychometric measurement of IE; the second explored the factor structure of the Intuitive Eating Scale 2 (IES-2) in a clinical population and established clinical norms, and the third adapted and validated the IES-2 for early adolescents. The fourth study reports data from early adolescents outlining the preliminary estimates constructs such as psychological distress, disordered eating, and body image disturbances. This study also reports the prevalence of IE and body appreciation in this demographic. The fifth study reports findings from a mixed- methods study evaluating the feasibilityand preliminary efficacy of an IE intervention for early adolescents. Taken together, this thesis extends our understanding of the role that IE can play in adolescent health promotion. By offering adolescent psychometric validation of commonly used measures, cross-sectional findings and prevalence data, and interventional outcomes, the work contained in this thesis has broad and multi-disciplinary implications.

Name thesis:degree_name

PhD

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Health Sciences

Grantor dc:publisher

ResearchSpace@Auckland

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Babbott, Katie M.

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Roberts, Marion
• Consedine, Nathan

Statement dc:rights

• Items in ResearchSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/docs/uoa-docs/rights.htm

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/2292/67514

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:researchspace.auckland.ac.nz:2292/67514