The research team, led by Professor Viren Swami, Professor of Social Psychology at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, surveyed 500 adults in the United Kingdom. Participants were assessed on their individual levels of contact with nature, including how much they noticed nature during their daily routines and how frequently, and for how long, they spent time in natural environments. They also completed questionnaires measuring body image, self-compassion, connectedness to nature and intuitive eating.

Intuitive eating is an anti-dieting approach that focuses on listening to the body’s internal signals of hunger and fullness rather than following strict external eating rules. Rather than counting calories or categorising foods as forbidden, intuitive eaters trust their physiological cues and choose foods that satisfy their body’s actual needs. The concept has attracted growing interest from researchers because restrictive dieting is associated with poor long-term outcomes, while intuitive eating has been linked to psychological wellbeing and more stable eating patterns.

The findings revealed a direct positive relationship between nature contact and intuitive eating: the more contact people had with natural environments, the more likely they were to eat intuitively. However, the study found that indirect pathways involving other psychological factors were even more important than this direct association, pointing to the mechanisms through which nature appears to shape eating behaviour.

The first pathway ran through body appreciation. The researchers suggest that contact with nature helps people feel more comfortable in their bodies, more appreciative of what their bodies can do, and more responsive to their bodies’ needs. This heightened body appreciation, in turn, was associated with higher levels of intuitive eating. In other words, people who spent more time engaging with the natural world tended to value their bodies more, and that appreciation appeared to translate into eating habits guided by internal signals rather than external rules.

The second pathway involved self-compassion. Greater nature contact was linked to higher levels of self-compassion, and the researchers believe this psychological resource provides a buffer against responding to difficult thoughts and emotions through impulsive eating. Instead of reaching for food as a coping mechanism during moments of stress or negative self-judgement, people with greater self-compassion may be more inclined to follow their body’s signals and choose foods that better meet their physiological needs.

These mechanisms fit within a broader body of research on the psychological benefits of nature exposure. Previous studies have shown that contact with natural environments can reduce anxiety and depression and improve various measures of wellbeing, including life satisfaction. Attention restoration theory proposes that natural settings replenish depleted cognitive resources, while stress reduction frameworks suggest that green and blue spaces lower physiological arousal. The new findings extend this literature by suggesting that these benefits may ripple outward into domains as specific as eating behaviour, mediated by how people feel about their bodies and how kindly they treat themselves.

Lead author Viren Swami said the findings are important because they provide the first evidence that contact with nature may shape people’s eating habits. He noted that the new study is the first to show how nature can influence eating habits, by helping people develop more positive relationships with their bodies and greater self-compassion, and that these findings could have practical benefits for public health professionals.

The researchers acknowledge limitations in the study, particularly its reliance on self-reported data, which can be influenced by memory biases and social desirability. Because the study measured participants at a single point in time, it also cannot establish whether nature contact causes healthier eating habits or whether people who eat intuitively are simply more likely to seek out nature. Further studies in other countries are needed to test whether the associations hold across different cultures, climates and patterns of access to green space.

Even with those caveats, the initial results suggest that greater access to and engagement with nature could support public health efforts to promote healthier, more sustainable eating behaviours. If future experimental research confirms the pathways identified here, prescribing time in green spaces could become a complementary tool alongside nutrition education, one that works not by imposing dietary rules but by strengthening the psychological foundations, body appreciation and self-compassion, on which intuitive eating depends.

The connection between nature and eating behaviour sits within a growing field of research sometimes described as the nature–wellbeing literature, which has expanded rapidly over the past two decades. Much of this work has focused on measurable outcomes such as reduced rumination, lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol, and improved mood after walks in green settings. What distinguishes the new study is its focus on a behaviour that is not typically associated with the outdoors. Eating is usually studied in the context of kitchens, restaurants, food advertising and dieting culture, so the idea that the natural environment might shape it represents a notable widening of the field.

Body appreciation, one of the two mediating pathways identified in the study, is itself an established predictor of intuitive eating in prior research. People who evaluate their bodies positively, focusing on function and gratitude rather than appearance, tend to be less driven by external dietary rules and more attuned to hunger and satiety cues. The suggestion that nature contact might feed into this psychological resource is consistent with earlier findings that exposure to natural settings can reduce appearance-focused thinking. Some researchers have argued that natural environments draw attention outward, toward surroundings rather than the self, which may temporarily interrupt the self-scrutiny that fuels body dissatisfaction.

The self-compassion pathway is similarly grounded in existing psychology. Self-compassion, defined as treating oneself with kindness during moments of failure or distress, has repeatedly been associated with less emotional eating and fewer episodes of loss-of-control eating. Emotional eating is often understood as an attempt to regulate unpleasant feelings through palatable food, and interventions that strengthen self-compassion have shown promise in reducing this pattern. If nature contact genuinely fosters self-compassion, as the study’s findings suggest, it could offer a low-cost, accessible route to supporting people who struggle with impulsive eating.

The study’s reliance on cross-sectional data means the direction of the associations remains open. It is plausible that the relationship runs in both directions. People who feel comfortable in their bodies and eat intuitively may find it easier to spend time outdoors, unburdened by the self-consciousness that can make public spaces feel threatening. Longitudinal designs, which follow participants over time, and experimental studies that assign people to nature exposure or control conditions would help clarify whether nature contact actively improves eating behaviour or simply correlates with it.

There are also practical questions about dosage and setting. The study measured everyday nature contact, including noticing nature during routine activities, which suggests that even small doses, such as tending plants, walking through a park or pausing to observe trees on a commute, may contribute. However, the researchers did not report whether wilder or more biodiverse environments produce stronger effects than manicured urban greenery, an issue that has divided researchers in related work on green space and mental health. Access is another consideration. In many countries, proximity to parks and green space is unevenly distributed, with lower-income neighbourhoods often having less and poorer-quality green infrastructure, which could mean that any nature-based public health strategy would need to address inequities in access.

The UK sample also raises questions about generalisability. Attitudes toward nature, patterns of outdoor recreation and cultural norms around food and body image vary considerably across countries. In some cultures, meals are strongly shaped by social and family structures that may interact differently with the psychological pathways identified here. Testing the model in countries with different climates, urban forms and dietary traditions would be an important next step, as the authors themselves acknowledge.

For public health professionals, the appeal of the findings lies in their potential complementarity with existing approaches. Nutrition education and dietary guidance often struggle to produce lasting behaviour change, partly because rigid rules can undermine the internal regulation they aim to support. Intuitive eating, by contrast, emphasises trust in the body’s own signals, and the new research suggests that the psychological conditions for that trust, body appreciation and self-compassion, may be cultivable through engagement with the natural world. If confirmed, this would position green space not merely as a venue for physical activity but as an environment that shapes how people relate to their bodies and, by extension, to food.

The study also adds to a broader conversation about how urban planning, mental health and nutrition policy intersect. Green prescriptions, in which health professionals encourage patients to spend time in nature, are already being trialled in several countries for conditions ranging from anxiety to hypertension. The new findings suggest that such schemes could carry benefits beyond mood and physical activity, potentially reaching eating behaviour through the psychological mechanisms the researchers identified. Whether these effects are large enough to matter at a population scale remains to be established, but the study opens a line of inquiry that connects two domains, environmental exposure and eating behaviour, that have rarely been examined together.

Subject of Research: The relationship between contact with natural environments and intuitive eating, mediated by body appreciation and self-compassion

Article Title: Contact with nature is linked to healthy eating

Article References: Contact with nature is linked to healthy eating. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: nature contact, intuitive eating, body image, body appreciation, self-compassion, eating behaviour, public health, green space, mental wellbeing, Anglia Ruskin University, Body Image journal, UK adults

The research, led by Chiara Lombardi and Maria Anna Donati of the University of Florence, together with colleagues including Giulia Fioravanti and Sara Bocci Benucci, set out to integrate two research traditions that have largely run in parallel. On one side sits the addiction literature, which has long identified impulsivity—a multidimensional trait encompassing tendencies toward rash action, lack of planning, and difficulty inhibiting responses—as a transdiagnostic vulnerability factor across substance and behavioral addictions. On the other side sits the body image literature, which links body dissatisfaction, the drive for thinness or muscularity, and diminished body appreciation to disordered eating and compulsive exercise. Until now, few studies had modeled how these two sets of variables operate together in predicting exercise addiction risk within a single statistical framework.

Exercise addiction itself remains a contested and under-studied phenomenon. It is not formally listed as a standalone diagnosis in the DSM-5-TR or the ICD-11, although compulsive exercise is recognized as a frequent feature of eating disorders and body dysmorphic disorder. Researchers typically define it through core addiction components: salience, in which exercise becomes the most important activity in a person’s life; mood modification, using workouts to alter emotional states; tolerance, requiring ever-greater doses of activity to achieve the same effect; withdrawal symptoms such as irritability and anxiety when exercise is missed; conflict, with exercise interfering with work, relationships, and other pursuits; and relapse, the rapid return to excessive patterns after attempts to cut back. Prevalence estimates vary widely by population and instrument, but risk appears elevated among endurance athletes, fitness-center clients, and individuals with eating disorder pathology.

To probe the pathways into this risk, the Italian team recruited 418 adults, 54 percent of whom were female, with a mean age of 30.76 years and a standard deviation of 13.08, yielding a broad sample spanning late adolescence through middle age. Participants completed a battery of validated self-report instruments measuring exercise addiction symptoms, multidimensional impulsivity, and a set of body image–related variables, including dysmorphic body image concerns, drive for muscularity, and body appreciation—the capacity to hold favorable opinions of one’s body regardless of perceived imperfections. The researchers then employed path analysis, a form of structural equation modeling that estimates direct and indirect pathways among variables simultaneously, while statistically controlling for gender and age.

The methodological rigor of the analysis deserves emphasis. Path analysis allowed the team to test whether impulsivity and body image variables each contributed uniquely to exercise addiction risk, and whether their effects were better understood as independent channels or as interconnected routes—for example, whether impulsive individuals who also harbor body image concerns face compounded vulnerability. Fit indices such as the comparative fit index, the Tucker-Lewis index, and the root mean square error of approximation were used to evaluate how well the hypothesized model reproduced the observed covariance structure, following conventional thresholds established in the structural equation modeling literature. Bootstrapping procedures provided confidence intervals for indirect effects, a technique recommended for mediation testing because it avoids relying on assumptions of normality in the sampling distribution of product terms.

The central finding was clear: both impulsivity and body image–related variables were significantly associated with exercise addiction risk. In other words, the psychological machinery of addiction—the tendency to act without adequate forethought and to experience difficulty stopping a rewarding behavior—contributes to vulnerability, but so does the motivational engine rooted in how people perceive and feel about their own bodies. Individuals with heightened dysmorphic concern, a stronger drive for muscularity, and lower body appreciation reported more exercise addiction symptoms, consistent with the idea that for many people, exercise functions as a body-shaping or anxiety-regulating behavior rather than purely a health behavior. The coexistence of these two pathways suggests that exercise addiction may arise through multiple etiological routes, mirroring what has been observed in eating disorders, where both trait impulsivity and sociocultural body ideals play documented roles.

Because men and women often differ in both impulsivity profiles and body image concerns—women historically reporting more drive for thinness and body dissatisfaction, men more drive for muscularity and muscle dysmorphia symptoms—the researchers went a step further and tested whether their model held equally across genders. Using multi-group path analysis, they examined structural invariance, asking whether the same pathways operated with the same strength for men and women. This is a critical but frequently skipped step in behavioral research; models estimated on mixed samples can mask meaningful gender differences or, conversely, overstate them. The invariance testing in this study provides a more nuanced picture of how risk unfolds differently, or similarly, across genders, and the authors report that gender differences were present in the data, prompting the formal comparison of group-specific models.

The findings carry practical implications for screening and prevention. Fitness professionals, sports coaches, and clinicians are increasingly encouraged to view excessive exercise not as admirable discipline but as a potential red flag when accompanied by distress, rigidity, and life interference. If impulsivity marks one vulnerability channel, brief screening tools derived from the UPPS-P impulsive behavior tradition could help identify at-risk exercisers in gyms and athletic settings. If body image concerns mark another, interventions that cultivate body appreciation and challenge internalized appearance ideals—approaches already validated in the body image field—may reduce the motivational fuel for compulsive training. Integrated prevention programs that address both trait-level self-regulation and appearance-related cognition could plausibly outperform approaches targeting either factor alone.

The study also contributes to an ongoing conceptual debate. Some researchers argue that exercise addiction is best understood through interactional models that emphasize the paradox of exercise: a behavior that is beneficial in moderation becomes pathological only in specific psychological and social contexts. Others caution that measurement limitations, reliance on self-report, and the absence of longitudinal designs have hampered the field. The present study acknowledges these constraints; its cross-sectional design cannot establish causal direction, and self-report measures are susceptible to social desirability bias, particularly in domains like exercise where excessive behavior may be culturally rewarded. Still, by modeling pathways rather than simple correlations, and by testing invariance across genders, the work moves the field toward the kind of mechanistic understanding needed to design effective interventions.

Ultimately, the message for the public is nuanced. Exercise remains one of the most powerful tools available for preventing chronic disease and supporting mental health, and the overwhelming majority of people who train regularly benefit enormously. But the Florence study is a reminder that the same behavior can serve very different psychological masters. For individuals high in impulsivity, exercise may become another arena for dysregulated reward seeking; for those struggling with body dissatisfaction or a relentless drive for muscularity, the treadmill and the weight rack can become instruments of appearance anxiety. Recognizing these dual pathways is a step toward ensuring that the pursuit of fitness stays, for everyone, genuinely health-promoting rather than quietly addictive.

Subject of Research: Psychological risk factors for exercise addiction, focusing on impulsivity and body image–related variables

Article Title: Exploring the Pathways to Exercise Addiction Risk: The Role of Impulsivity and Body Image–Related Variables

Article References: Lombardi, C., Fioravanti, G., Bocci Benucci, S., & Donati, M. A. (2026). Exploring the Pathways to Exercise Addiction Risk: The Role of Impulsivity and Body Image–Related Variables. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-026-01721-4

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s11469-026-01721-4

Keywords: exercise addiction, impulsivity, body image, drive for muscularity, body appreciation, behavioral addiction, path analysis, eating disorders, mental health, physical exercise, gender differences, University of Florence