Eating your feelings. Relationships between alexithymia and unhealthy eating habits in adolescents

Abstract

Alexithymia is defined as a deficit in the ability to understand and express emotion. There is a positive relationship between alexithymia and obesity but this relationship has yet to be investigated in adolescents. We predicted that adolescents with higher Body Mass Index (BMI) would have higher alexithymia scores. Nine schools in the Midlands region participated in data collection, which included objective measures of BMI, self-reported eating habits such as breakfast frequency and snacking behaviour and alexithymia. There were 60 male and 50 female participants, with a mean age of 12 (SD ± .7), mean alexithymia score of 33.7 (SD ± 4.9) and mean BMI of 20 (SD ± 4.7). Preliminary analysis indicated total alexithymia scores were not directly related to BMI and neither were any specific subscale scores. However, the subscale scores for Difficulty Describing Feelings were related to eating habits that contribute to overweight. For example, there was a negative relationship between Difficulty Describing Feelings scores and self-reported daily fruit and vegetable consumption, and a positive relationship between Difficulty Describing Feelings scores and unhealthy snacking. Alexithymia scores were not related to socioeconomic status or ethnicity. These results suggest that unhealthy eating habits may underlie the relationship between difficulties describing feelings and the emergence of obesity in adulthood.