Abstract

Background: The prevalence of obesity in the world population makes it necessary to explore into its behavioral and cognitive motivational determinants. Eating self-regulation emerges as an individual resource that favors maintaining a healthy diet and nutritional status, which in turn will affect the well-being of the population. Objective: To establish the association between eating self-regulation, diet, nutritional status and subjective well-being in adults. Method: Descriptive correlational study, in a non-probabilistic sample of 528 Chilean adults who answered a questionnaire on sociodemographic and health history, compliance with dietary recommendations and scales of food self-regulation and subjective well-being. Descriptive analysis, correlation and multivariate regression were carried out. Results: Normal weight adults presented better indices in all the variables studied. Eating self-regulation predicted compliance with nutritional recommendations (β=0.085, Wald = 48.501, p<0.001) and nutritional status (β=-0.05, Wald = 16.02, p<0.001). Compliance with nutritional recommendations (β=0.206, p<0.001) and BMI (β=- 0.142, p=0.001) predicted well- being. Conclusions: In an obesogenic context, eating self-regulation appears as a key resource that positively influences not only a healthy diet and nutritional status, but also subjective well-being.