About the Research

How do you decide when to eat and stop eating?  Some people rely on internal hunger and satiety cues: their stomach growls and they respond by eating; their stomach no longer growls and they stop eating.  Other people look at the clock, see that it's noon, and decide it's time to eat lunch.  When the food is gone, lunch is over.

See a difference?

While in New Zealand, I'll dig deep into the research on eating behavior.  I started this as a graduate student at Marywood University when I researched intuitive eating for my Master's in Nutrition thesis (you'll find the PowerPoint presentation of my defense below). I'll apply my background in psychology and nutrition to developing an intervention that will relate to some aspect of eating behavior.  My thesis will be in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a PhD in Public Health.  My supervisors are from the Department of Human Nutrition and the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine.

Currently, this is what I'm working on:

"What are the modifiable factors associated with weight maintenance among mid-age women that can be targeted by a weight gain prevention intervention?"

How am I doing this?

• I'll identify modifiable factors associated with weight gain prevention - data is being collected from a nationwide cohort of mid-age (40-50 years in 2009) New Zealand women through a mailed survey.  In May 2012, we are mailing out the 3-year follow-up survey.
• Baseline (2009 survey) measures of particular interest included:
• Intuitive Eating Scale (Tylka, 2006)
• Speed of Eating (Otsuka, 2006)
• Mindfulness (Brown, 2003)
• Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II (Bond, 2011)
• I'll develop a weight gain prevention intervention as an alternative to traditional interventions that teach calorie restriction through diet and exercise.  
• Aspects of intuitive eating (eating in accordance with body signals of hunger and satiety), mindfulness, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) will be incorporated into the non-dieting intervention. 

What are the outcomes so far?

• C Madden, S Leong, A Gray, C Horwath. Eating in response to hunger and satiety signals is related to BMI in a nationwide sample of 1601 mid-age New Zealand women. 2012.
• S Leong, C Madden, A Gray, C Horwath. Self-determined, autonomous regulation of eating behavior is related to lower body mass index in a nationwide survey of middle-aged women. 2012
• S Leong, C Madden, A Gray, D Waters, C Horwath.  Self-reported speed of eating is related to body mass index in women aged 40-50 years.  Journal of the American Dietetic Association 2011;111:1192-1197.

Who's doing interesting work related to eating behavior/obesity prevention & treatment?

• Linda Bacon - Health at Every Size. Yeaaaah!
• Kelly Brownell - He's the director of the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity.  We used his LEARN workbook to modify the Mission Meltaway curriculum at the Office for Aging.  I highly recommend the book! 
• Leonard Epstein - Traffic light diet. 'Nuff said.
• Caroline Horwath - My advisor at the University of Otago.  Her other work involves teaching lifestyle changes.
• Elyse Resch - THE resource on intuitive eating.
• Evelyn Tribole - THE resource on intuitive eating.
• Brian Wansink - Visit www.mindlesseating.org right now!  I love his research.  I met him at Cornell at Consumer Camp and I'm pretty sure I said, "It is so awesome to meet you."  Sara = dork.
• Rena Wing - Researching behavioral treatment of obesity.  She knows her stuff.

Recently, I jumped over to Tribole and Resch's Intuitive Eating website to look for studies.  I noticed a few studies were conducted by students, which got me thinking about my own intervention that I ran for my master's thesis.  What happened with that? I couldn't remember! Lucky for us all, I had the PowerPoint presentation from my defense saved to this laptop - now we'll all know what happened after weekly meetings with yours truly (any random "A"s are the result of the conversion - oops!):