This research explores two potential predictors of body weight and eating attitudes in University students. These two predictors are outlined below. Child autonomy University students are shown to have worse diet quality compared to their diet prior to attending University (Deliens et al., 2021), and tend to gain weight notably faster than the general population (Vandeboncoeur et al., 2015). Subsequently, this highlights the importance of investigating the eating behaviour of University students. Students' poorer dietary quality may be the consequence of a range of direct influences that arise from the destabilisation of routine and increased freedom while at University. Qualitative studies have found that students report influences such as the absence of time, lack of self-control and increased accessibility of unhealthy food choices to be key determinants in the decline of their diet quality (Deliens et al., 2014). This ultimately highlights that students are ill-prepared for the increased autonomy they experience at University. Students enter into a process of learning to be independent in their food choices, which includes realising that factors such as the time and effort of preparing food, and the budget available for purchasing food are important considerations. Research looking at University students' eating behaviour has explored elements of emotional eating (EE) and restrained eating (RE), with these behaviours being established as reliable predictors of BMI status in adults (Lowe & Levine, 2005). EE refers to overeating when faced with usually negative emotions including stress, sadness or irritability (van Strien et al., 2007). EE is typically correlated with greater levels of binge eating especially of unhealthy, calorie-dense foods, which results in a poorer diet quality (Ricca et al., 2009), and a subsequent increase in BMI (Geliebter & Aversa, 2003). RE is defined as the consistent engagement in calorie restriction with the motivation to lose weight or maintain weight loss (Polivy et al., 2020). This measure of RE reflects an individual’s intention to reduce calorie intake, meaning it is not necessarily related to the actual behaviour of reducing calories consumed. This is an important distinction due to research highlighting the nature of RE often results in a binge-restrict cycle, in which the individual tends to maintain or gain weight as opposed to losing weight (Lowe & Levine, 2005). A previous study in University students showed that EE and cognitive restraint were positively correlated and associated with an increase in BMI (Kowalkowska & Poínhos, 2021; Poínhos et al., 2015). This highlights that EE and RE are behaviours which can significantly impact the BMI of students. Considering the destabilisation of routine experienced by students and their increased risk of rapid weight gain (Vandeboncoeur et al., 2015), it is important to investigate which factors prior to attending University may promote students to become more resilient to the transition to University (Deliens et al., 2021). One way of investigating links between childhood experiences and their relation to eating behaviour in University students is via retrospective methods. There is extensive research into the influence of parents, which is logical considering that parents and guardians are the primary influence on a child's food environment for the first few years of life (Stifter et al., 2011). It is understood that pressuring a child to consume certain food types can promote obesogenic behaviours such as reduced fruit and vegetable intake (Fisher et al., 2002). Additionally, restricting a child in the foods they eat can lead to the 'forbidden fruit effect' in which the child is more motivated to consume the forbidden foods upon their unlimited availability (Fisher and Birch, 1999). From a broader view, it is posited that pressuring or restricting a child's food choices can lead to the child becoming more susceptible to overeating beyond feelings of satiation (Birch et al., 2003) and eating in response to negative emotions (Stone et al., 2022). The latter association could be inferred as the emergence of EE behaviours. These parental behaviours have been linked to later life dietary outcomes such as the presence of RE, and subsequent overeating (Brunstrom et al., 2005), greater risk of obesity (Klesges et al., 1992) and EE (Tan et al., 2016). Therefore, parental control may be an important predictor of a child's current and subsequent eating behaviour, and especially of a child's engagement in restrictive or emotional eating. Child autonomy is allowing the child greater control over their own behaviour (Rueth et al., 2016). Autonomy has been associated with better outcomes in other areas of research such as engagement with learning (Grolnick & Ryan, 1987), well-being (van der Kaap-Deeder et al., 2017) and prosocial behaviour (Rueth et al., 2016). However, there is less understanding of its role in eating behaviour. Mogharreban & Nahikian-Nelms (1996) highlight that allowing the child to do things for themselves and be independent within the safety of parental support can lead to greater child autonomy. Child autonomy and parental control often share a positive bidirectional relationship. For example, parents may plan a meal to ensure the child is offered adequate nutrition, but by allowing the child the opportunity to assist with the food shop, help prepare and serve the meal, and terminate eating upon fullness, all of which facilitate autonomy (Tan et al., 2016; Mogharreban & Nahikian-Nelms, 1996). This parental behaviour would constitute covert control, in which the parent's influence on the child's behaviour is undetectable to the child (Tan et al., 2016), and allows the child to perceive greater autonomy. This demonstrates that whilst the parents control the foods being offered, the opportunity for the child to have a choice has a bearing on consumption, particularly with healthy foods. Without these parental boundaries, the child could engage in counterproductive eating behaviours, likely including avoidance of fruit and vegetables, which is a behaviour often witnessed in children (Holley et al., 2017). In support of this, Mogharreban & Nahikian-Nelms (1996) highlight that whilst the child engaging in the behaviour themselves is the best way to learn and develop autonomy, the parent maintains an important role in modelling and ensuring a safe environment for the child to learn. Subsequently, these autonomous behaviours, paired with modelling positive mealtime interactions, aid in offering healthy eating guidance to the child. As a result, the child has the opportunity to learn about making healthier food choices and accept these foods into their diet, linking to more positive dietary outcomes such as increased vegetable consumption (Tan et al., 2016). However, too much parental influence in the form of excessive parental control can be associated with negative eating outcomes such as refusal to eat certain foods (Fisher et al., 2002) and difficulty in regulating own intake (Faith et al., 2004). Therefore, it may be more important that parents provide children with guidance to make healthier food choices, rather than controlling the foods children have access to. This research aims to understand how levels of childhood autonomy and guidance from parental figures can predict eating behaviour in University students. It utilises measures of child autonomy in regard to how much control the child has over their own behaviour, and healthy eating guidance provided to the child by parents. Assessing and comparing the two measures helps to unpick the nature of child autonomy. If child autonomy and healthy eating guidance are not positively correlated, it would suggest that autonomy is a negative measure which reflects the individual lacking attention and education from parents. Ultimately, it is important to explore behaviours that can promote improved eating outcomes, with Pokorski et al. (2022) suggesting that positive eating behaviours are likely more stable over time. Regarding the effect of autonomy on University students, this research proposes that by allowing a child more autonomy, they will suffer less with the displacement and independence from University, and subsequently have better eating behaviour at University than those with lower reports of childhood autonomy. This is because they will have developed independence prior to University, having already experienced responsibility surrounding food, making the change in eating lifestyle less prominent. Mindful Eating Mindfulness is a taught practice, which entails paying attention to your thoughts, feelings, body sensations, and surroundings in the present moment with a non-judgemental stance (Davis et al., 2008). The practice of mindfulness has been extremely effective in helping people live more in the present and as a method of managing health issues such as chronic pain, depression, and anxiety (Eberth & Sedlmeier, 2012). More recently, research has shown mindfulness practice to have a significant effect on both eating habits and weight loss. As a consequence, researchers in nutrition have begun to link the practice of mindfulness to eating via the development of a concept known as mindful eating. The process of eating is complex, however, and there are a number of mechanisms that could potentially be attributed to the concept of mindful eating. As a consequence, problems have arisen in establishing a holistic and consistent definition. Despite this, a commonly accepted definition of mindful eating is the present moment awareness and focusing of attention on both physical and emotional sensations whilst eating (Albers, 2008). Furthermore, a recent review by Tapper, (2021) identified six practices most commonly related to mindful eating in the literature. These were as follows: 1. The present moment awareness of the sensory properties of food. - This is described as being attentive to the smell, texture, sight, taste, and temperature of food whilst you consume it. This practice is often taught through a short raisin exercise (Arch et al., 2016), where you're prompted to eat a raisin mindfully through the present moment awareness of senses such as smell, texture, sight, taste, and temperature whilst you are eating. 2. Present Moment awareness of internal bodily sensations relating to hunger, fullness and eating - This is being attentive to the differing bodily sensations and feelings of hunger and fullness, that come with consuming different types of food. This practice is often taught through body scans (Palascha et al., 2021), whereby you are prompted to mentally scan your body from head to toe whilst eating bringing awareness to any sensations you may feel. 3. Acceptance of cravings - This is the practice of observing and exploring food cravings through a non-judgemental stance, instead of trying to ignore or control them. This practice is often taught through a technique known as urge surfing (Jenkins and Tapper 2014), where you are taught not to give in to your urges but instead ride them out until the urge eventually passes on its own. 4. Acceptance and/or decentering from food-related thoughts - This is the practice of being attentive to food-related thoughts such as ‘I may as well eat the whole lot’ and viewing them in a non-judgemental stance and/or as thoughts separate from oneself. This practice can be taught through a technique known as the mind bus (Tapper & Ahmad 2018) whereby you imagine yourself as the bus and view your thoughts as just passengers that ride along with you. 5. Present moment awareness of cues that elicit eating or the urge to eat - This is the awareness of cues that prompt the urge to eat (e.g., an open packet of crisps) or generate eliciting feelings such as hunger or cravings (e.g., the smell of cookies). As well as, attending to introspective cues such as low mood and thoughts of eating. This practice is taught through daily self-monitoring (Martin et al 2017), whereby you are required to routinely observe and record your body's feelings, emotions, thoughts, and behaviours towards food daily. 6. Decentering from cravings - This is the adoption of a detached perspective on cravings, viewing them as thoughts separate from oneself. This practice is often taught through an exercise known as leaves on a stream (Wilson et al 2021) whereby each time you notice a thought, sensation or feeling, regardless of whether they are good or bad, you imagine placing it on a leaf and letting it float down a stream. A valid measurement of mindful eating is essential in researching its possible effects. The development of such a measure is difficult due to the practices composing mindful eating still being unclear in the literature. As a consequence, there is significant variation across mindful eating measures developed so far, despite intending to measure the same construct. Two established mindful eating measures identified in the literature are the MEQ (Framson et al., 2009) and the MEI (Peitz et al., 2021). The MEQ is the first developed and most commonly used measure of mindful eating in the literature. It’s a 28-item measure with five subscales relating to awareness, distraction, emotional response, external cues, and inhibition. However, there are concerns about the use of this measure, as it shows overlap with other constructs like emotional and external eating and fails to measure some key practices such as awareness of eating motives. The MEI on the other hand is a more recent measure of mindful eating, which incorporates questions from previous measures (e.g., MEQ), and expands these by incorporating additional practices which have been found to be associated with mindful eating. MEI is a 30-item scale with seven subscales relating to awareness of senses whilst eating, connectedness, awareness of eating triggers and motives, acceptance of one's own eating experience, eating in response to the awareness of fullness, non-reactive stance and focused attention on eating. Thus, the MEI although not as commonly used as the MEQ is a far more comprehensive measure. Due to its effect on eating habits, the concept of mindful eating has been associated with BMI. A number of studies have found that higher reported mindful eating is associated with lower BMI in participants (Moor et al., 2013, Framson et al., 2009, Ahmad et al., 2019, Anderson et al., 2016). In light of this observed relationship, a number of Mindfulness-Based Interventions (MBIs) have been developed and employed as a method of reducing BMI and tackling the ongoing obesity pandemic. Despite this, the effects of MBIs on the reduction of BMI have been inconclusive, with some analyses showing a significant effect (Lawlor et al., 2020, Roche et al., 2019) and others not (Grider et al., 2021, Mercado et al., 2021). A possible explanation for this is that the mixed results are the consequence of MBIs varying substantially in the mindful eating practices which they teach. MBIs so far vary substantially in the mindful eating practices in which they teach, this therefore could be the basis differing results. In light of this potential explanation, further research is needed to understand which practices of mindful eating are most significant in affecting BMI, to then inform the development and content of future MBI’s. Although speculative, both present moment awareness of sensory properties of food and present moment awareness of internal bodily sensations relating to hunger, fullness and eating, may be the practices with the most significant impact on BMI. A recent PROSPERO registered review (CRD42022346160) by Zhang and colleagues (2022) on mindful eating identified them both as the most commonly applied mindful eating practices in the literature. This notion is also supported by experimental research findings showing both practices had a significant effect on reducing the consumption of energy dense foods (Jordan et al., 2014 and Lenne & Mann, 2020), an eating behaviour known to have a significant influence on BMI (Duncan et al., 1983). However, as previously noted this suggestion is speculative and further research is needed to establish the key driving practices. Therefore, the present study aims to first investigate the correlation between the two measures of mindful eating (MEQ and MEI), due to the differences in mindful eating practices identified by these measures. Second, the current study aims to utilise these two measures, to really establish the relationship between Mindful Eating and BMI, previously identified in the literature. Finally, the current study aims to develop a bespoke measure of mindful eating, incorporating six of the most commonly reported mindful eating practices, with the specific aim of assessing which practices are most associated with BMI.