Keywords
weight loss, hunger and satiety
Healthy eating has evolved beyond dieting and caloric restrictions. While traditional weight loss methods have shown success over a short period, they were also associated with poor weight maintenance, health issues and deterioration in quality of life of individualsIE is an adaptive form of eating that guides eating behaviours according to internal hunger and satiety cues, rather than external emotional drives or dieting guidelinesSeveral internal and external factors that can either restrict, enhance or inversely correlate with the ability to eat intuitively have been identified, among which perceived stress (PS), self-compassion (SC) and BMIIn a recent systematic review of interventions investigating mindful eating and IE, neither diet quality nor energy intake was found to be significantly improved in the intervention groups, highlighting the need of further research of better study design qualitiesTo the best of our knowledge, no studies have evaluated the short- and long-term effectiveness of an active and a passive text-messaging intervention on IE while considering IE barriers and enhancers among the general population. Hence, the present study aimed at assessing the effectiveness of a 6-week text message-based IE intervention on IE, while correcting for SC and PS level. Accordingly, we hypothesised the following:H1: The 5-week text message-based IE intervention will be effective in enhancing IE in the short and longer term.H2: The active text-messaging IE intervention will be more effective in enhancing IE compared with the passive intervention.