Effect of Acceptance and Commitment Intervention on Eating Behaviors in Obese Female Students in Primary School

Background and Purpose: Nutrition-related behaviors form up to the age of 18 and remain stable in later years; so before fixing incorrect nutritional habits in children, it is better to take the necessary steps to follow the healthy dietary principles. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of admission and commitment intervention on eating behaviors of obese female students in primary school. Method: The present research was a semi-experimental study of pretest-posttest control group design. The statistical population of this study included all primary school students in the academic year of 2017-2018, among them 30 children from the second to the sixth grade were selected through convenient sampling according to the conditions of entering the research and randomly assigned in the two experimental and control groups. The research tool was a children eating behavior questioner) CEBQ) (Wardel et al., 2001). The commitment and acceptance intervention for mothers and female students in the experimental group was performed for 10 sessions of 60 minutes to two months, and the control group did not receive such an intervention. Covariance analysis was used to analyze the data. Results: The findings showed that there was a significant difference between the experimental and control groups in terms of eating behaviors; in other words, commitment and acceptance intervention significantly reduced the eating tendencies and its sub-scales in the obese female students (F = 22.66 and P <0.01). Conclusion: Through teaching mindfulness techniques, acceptance and commitment-based intervention helped the participants to form more flexible and appropriate responses to food instead of inappropriate ones.