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Background Mindful eating (ME), defined as a “non-judgmental awareness of bodily and emotional sensations regarding food consumption”, may be a promising strategy to promote healthy eating behaviors. However, little is known about the psychosocial factors and underlying beliefs that explain ME adoption. Methods Participants (N = 282; Mage = 43.2) responded to an online questionnaire based on the I-Change Model. Groups with different frequencies of prior engagement in ME, i.e., low (n = 82; LME), medium (n = 96), and high (n = 104), were compared via (M)ANOVAs on factors and individual beliefs regarding predisposing (i.e., habits, experience with mindfulness, emotional eating, facets of ME), pre-motivational (i.e., knowledge, behavioral cognizance, risk perception, cues to action), and motivational factors (i.e., attitudes, self-efficacy, social influence) as well as their intentions and action planning. Bivariate correlations and a forward-stepwise regression with ICM constructs were conducted to examine model fit. Results LME had a greater habit of mindless eating and significantly lower internal awareness, cognizance, cues, and less favorable attitudes, self-efficacy, engagement and support by their social environment, intention, and action plans about engaging in ME than the other two groups. Less habitual mindless eating, and greater experience, internal awareness, cognizance, susceptibility, support, and intention explained 54% of the variance in ME. Discussion and conclusion Results indicate that individuals need to be treated differently when promoting ME with respect to their psychosocial characteristics, rather than as a single group with homogenous baseline beliefs, abilities, support, and motivation. Future longitudinal research should examine which determinants are predictors of ME to better tailor program contents.

Additional file 1. Supplementary tables displaying the between-subject effects for individuals with lower, medium, and higher engagement in mindful eating-related actions on items of I-Change Model indices and the Four Facet Mindful Eating Scale (FFaMES).