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

Nutrition-related behaviors have been formed up to 18 years of age and remain stable in later years, so before fixing incorrect nutritional habits in children 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 in obese female students in primary school. The present study was a semi-experimental method of pre-test-post-test type with control group. The statistical population of this study included all primary school students in the academic year of 96-97, 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 in two months, and the control group did not receive such an intervention. Covariance analysis was used to analyze the data. The findings showed that there was a significant difference between the experimental and control groups in 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). Acceptance and commitment-based intervention by teaching mindfulness techniques has helped participants create a more flexible and appropriate response to food rather than responding to food inappropriately.