Objective: Weight suppression (WS) is related to a wide variety of eating disorder characteristics. However, individuals with eating disorders usually reach their highest premorbid weight while still developing physically. Therefore, a more sensitive index of individual differences in highest premorbid weight may be one that compares highest premorbid z-BMI to current z-BMI (called developmental weight suppression (DWS) here). Method: We compared the relationships between traditional weight suppression (TWS) and DWS and a wide variety of measures related to bulimic psychopathology in 91 females (M age, 25.2; 60.5% White), with clinical or sub-clinical bulimia nervosa. Results: TWS and DWS were correlated (r = .40). TWS was significantly related to only one of 23 outcome variables whereas DWS showed significant or near-significant relationships to 14 outcomes. DWS showed consistent positive relations with behavioral outcomes (e.g., binge eating) but consistent negative relations with cognitive/affective outcomes (e.g., weight concerns). Conclusions: Findings indicated a much more consistent relationship between the novel DWS measure and bulimic characteristics than with the traditional weight suppression measure. DWS showed both positive and negative relations with bulimic symptoms, though these findings require replication to confirm their validity. Consistent evidence indicated that the two WS measures served as mutual suppressor variables.

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Objective Weight suppression (WS) is related to a wide variety of eating disorder characteristics. However, individuals with eating disorders usually reach their highest premorbid weight while still developing physically. Therefore, a more sensitive index of individual differences in highest premorbid weight may be one that compares highest premorbid z‐BMI to current z‐BMI (called developmental weight suppression [DWS] here). Method In this exploratory study, we compared the relationships between traditional weight suppression (TWS) and DWS and a variety of measures related to bulimic psychopathology in 91 females (M age, 25.2; 60.5% White), with clinical or sub‐clinical bulimia nervosa. Results TWS and DWS were correlated (r = 0.40, p < 0.001). TWS was only significantly related to a measure of physical activity whereas DWS was related to 14 outcomes. DWS showed consistent positive relations with behavioural outcomes (e.g., binge eating) but consistent negative relations with cognitive/affective outcomes (e.g., weight concerns). Conclusions Findings indicated much more consistent relationships between the novel DWS measure and bulimic characteristics than with the TWS measure. DWS showed both positive and negative relations with bulimic symptoms, though these findings require replication to confirm their validity. Consistent evidence indicated that the two WS measures served as mutual suppressor variables.

Emerging literature is exploring the contribution of specific nutritional characteristics and food additives to the development of addictive-like eating, implicating highly processed foods and those high in fat and sugar in its pathophysiology. To our knowledge, no mixed methods study has yet aimed to investigate the relationship between food characteristics and addictive-like eating. Towards this end, we applied an a priori classification scheme to open-ended answers to enable us to use quantitative methods to analyze qualitative data. A sample of individuals who endorsed self-perceived “food addiction” (N = 182; 50% female; Mage = 34.1) reported the foods to which they believed they were “addicted.” We classified these foods according to their levels of fat, carbohydrates, sugar, and sodium, and evaluated their predictive power on addictive-like eating. Pizza, chocolate, hamburgers, and pasta respectively, were the most reported food items to which participants felt they were addicted. Addictive-like eating was significantly predicted by endorsement of “addiction” to high-sodium foods. In contrast, “addiction” to high-sugar foods negatively predicted addictive-like eating symptoms. Findings support an association between highly processed and high-sodium foods with addictive-like eating behavior among humans, consistent in large part with prior human and animal literature. Results also suggest that people are readily able to report on their experiences of addiction to foods; specifically, they can freely endorse the experience of addictive-like eating and offer experiences of addictive foods that are largely consistent with theory and the literature.

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