Date of Award:

5-2008

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Health, Physical Education, and Recreation

Advisor/Chair:

Julie Gast

Abstract

Rates of obesity in the United States have been increasing despite an increase of dieters. A new paradigm, intuitive eating, has been introduced to counter the negative effects of dieting. Intuitive eating has not been compared to dieters on a nutritional level, however. The main purpose of this study was to determine the nutritional differences between intuitive eaters and dieters.

Participants were asked to complete questionnaires regarding food consumption and attitudes about eating. Participants (N = 32) were then classified as intuitive eaters or dieters and asked to complete six, 24-hr food logs. Data received from these food logs were compared based on group classification to determine statistical significance.

The results of the ttests did not determine statistical significance between groups regarding food consumption (p > .05). A chi-square test used to determine if intuitive eaters consumed within 100 kilocalories of their recommended level of calorie consumption was found to be statistically significant (p < .05).

Copyright for this work is retained by the student.