Emotional Eating: Psychosocial Bases, Accordingly Directed Treatment Design, and Longitudinal Effects in Women with Obesity.

Abstract

Emotional eating (eating triggered by adverse mood) might be an important psychosocial variable to address to improve overwhelmingly deficient obesity treatment outcomes in women. However, emotional eating has rarely been focused upon in a systematic, evidence-based manner. Within Part 1 of this field-based study completed within community health-promotion centers the United States, a treatment protocol was developed targeting negative mood, body satisfaction, and self-efficacy to resist negative emotion-related eating (SE-NegEm), which were the significant psychosocial predictors of emotional eating found at baseline in the women participants with obesity. A comparison condition consisted of matched treatment time, but focused upon typical processes of providing education in healthy eating and exercise. Cluster sampling allocated participants to either the treatment group (n = 100) or comparison group (n = 86). In Part 2, overall improvements in mood, body satisfaction, SE-NegEm, and emotional eating were found to be significant, and significantly more pronounced in the treatment group. In parallel multiple mediation analyses incorporating aggregated data, changes from baseline-Month 3 and baseline-Month 6 in negative mood, body satisfaction, and SE-NegEm significantly mediated relationships between group and changes in emotional eating from baseline-Month 6 and baseline-Month 12, respectively. Changes in body satisfaction and SE-NegEm were significant independent mediators for 6-month change, with negative mood change additionally significant for 12-month change. Reduced emotional eating significantly predicted lost weight, which was greater in the treatment group (-5.8% vs. -0.9%). The present process of tailoring and testing treatment content based on earlier-identified predictors of emotional eating was supported.