Networks of stress, affect and eating behaviour: anticipated stress coping predicts goal-congruent eating in young adults

Jens Blechert,Julia Reichenberger,Björn Pannicke,Tim Kaiser

doi:10.1186/s12966-020-01066-8

Abstract

BackgroundMany people aim to eat healthily. Yet, affluent food environments encourage consumption of energy dense and nutrient-poor foods, making it difficult to accomplish individual goals such as maintaining a healthy diet and weight. Moreover, goal-congruent eating might be influenced by affects, stress and intense food cravings and might also impinge on these in turn. Directionality and interrelations of these variables are currently unclear, which impedes targeted intervention. Psychological network models offer an exploratory approach that might be helpful to identify unique associations between numerous variables as well as their directionality when based on longitudinal time-series data.MethodsAcross 14 days, 84 diet-interested participants (age range: 18–38 years, 85.7% female, mostly recruited via universities) reported their momentary states as well as retrospective eating episodes four times a day. We used multilevel vector autoregressive network models based on ecological momentary assessment data of momentary affects, perceived stress and stress coping, hunger, food craving as well as goal-congruent eating behaviour.ResultsNeither of the momentary measures of stress (experience of stress or stress coping), momentary affects or craving uniquely predicted goal-congruent eating. Yet, temporal effects indicated that higher anticipated stress coping predicted subsequent goal-congruent eating. Thus, the more confident participants were in their coping with upcoming challenges, the more they ate in line with their goals.ConclusionMost eating behaviour interventions focus on hunger and craving alongside negative and positive affect, thereby overlooking additional important variables like stress coping. Furthermore, self-regulation of eating behaviours seems to be represented by how much someone perceives a particular eating episode as matching their individual eating goal. To conclude, stress coping might be a potential novel intervention target for eating related Just-In-Time Adaptive Interventions in the context of intensive longitudinal assessment.

Highlights

The hedonic appeal of such foods can cause unhealthy food consumption [17, 18] and might thereby threaten goal pursuit with regard to healthy eating. Both self-control and healthy eating can be threatened by internal factors such as food cravings [19], stress experience [20], coping and affects, each of which will be reviewed in the following
The present study aimed at improving the knowledge about stress, affect, and eating related variables as well as their dynamic interplay through employing psychological networks of Ecological momentary assessments (EMA) data gathered across 14 days
Two key findings of the present study should be highlighted: Regarding methodology, eating behaviour research can clearly benefit from EMA-based psychological networks, since they uncover multidirectional and time-lagged relationships of affects, stress, and health relevant behaviours among others

Summary

Introduction

Affluent food environments encourage consumption of energy dense and nutrient-poor foods, making it difficult to accomplish individual goals such as maintaining a healthy diet and weight. The hedonic appeal of such foods can cause unhealthy food consumption [17, 18] and might thereby threaten goal pursuit with regard to healthy eating. Both self-control and healthy eating can be threatened by internal factors such as food cravings [19], stress experience [20], coping (such as avoidance coping [21]) and affects (such as negative urgency [22]), each of which will be reviewed in the following

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion