Teaching Awareness of Mindful Eating: A Program for Workplace Health Promotion

Abstract

Background:

The tripling of U.S obesity rates since 1990 has accelerated employee health issues, employer health care costs, and loss of productivity and contributed to staggering levels of overall healthcare costs. In this paper, we describe an academic-business partnership to determine the feasibility of implementing within a local city government department, the anti-obesity program—Teaching Awareness of Mindful Eating (TAME).

Methods:

Based on the Information, Motivation, Behavior Skills Model, 15 employees classed as overweight (n = 4) or obese (n = 11) completed the 8-week mindful eating pilot program emphasizing (1) nutrition-related information and eating triggers and satiety, (2) guided self-exploration of motivational strategies to change eating behaviors, and (3) behavioral skills: practice of consuming food in the context of bountiful buffet-served food availability. At the beginning and end of the program, changes in body weight, hemoglobin A1C blood test, and blood pressure were measured.

Results:

Participants showed a statistically significant average reduction in body weight from 228 ± 62.4 SD pounds to 220 ± 65.3 (p = .001) and a percent drop in HbA1c from 5.6 ± 0.5 SD to 5.4 ± 0.6 SD (p = .037). Of the four people with BP readings outside of normative range, two dropped into normative range by the end of the study.

Conclusion/Implications for Practice:

Our encouraging findings support the feasibility and effectiveness of providing such a program to promote health within the workplace. We believe that forming academic-business partnerships can improve both employee health outcomes and employer return on investment in health care costs.