The Preventative Health Journal - Australia & New Zealand

The recent explosion of interest within the popular media, both on TV and in print, does not surprise Monash University’s ACTing on Weight researcher Emma Gallagher who is trialing a new psychological treatment for weight-loss maintenance, believing the method may hold the solution for hundreds of thousands of Australian’s who find it difficult to maintain their weight after they shed unwanted kilos.

Since March 2010 members of the general public have been volunteering to participate in the ACTing on Weight research that includes attending a one day workshop focusing on emotional eating to assist them with their weight loss maintenance.

Weight loss maintenance has been targeted because previous research shows that most people know how to and can lose weight, however most people re-gain that weight. If people can be helped to maintain weight loss this could contribute to the fight against obesity, the leading cause of premature death and illness in Australia.

Instead of focusing on food like other interventions, the ACTing on Weight research has been designed to investigate the extent to which Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), a psychological intervention, may help people to overcome emotional eating to assist them with their weight loss maintenance.

ACT is a psychological intervention, and a branch of behavioural therapy, which helps people deal with unpleasant thoughts and emotions without looking for ways to escape or suppress them, which in this context is through eating.

Chief Investigator Dr. Cate Bearsley Smith said that “many people engage in emotional eating because in the short term it seems to help them avoid difficult emotions states such as anxiety, boredom, loneliness, anger and depression. Where people turn to eating to regulate their emotional state they are inevitably going to sabotage their weight loss efforts”.

The ACTing on Weight approach works by teaching people psychological skills that will help them to better handle difficult thoughts and feelings that may be contributing to their emotional eating and weight loss maintenance struggle. That means that people may be less likely to use food as a coping mechanism.

Dr. Cate Bearsley-Smith said that “by attending the workshop as part of the ACTing on Weight research it is hoped that people will learn to feel their feelings and notice their thoughts without using food to avoid them, and in turn become more successful in their weight loss efforts”.

ACT and weight has been trialled internationally but the Monash University research is the first time it has been tested in Australia in the context of weight loss maintenance and emotional eating.