Eating behaviors and negative affect in college women's everyday lives

Abstract

Objective A growing body of research seeks to understand the relationship between mood and eating behaviors. Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) methods provide a method for assessing these processes in natural settings. We used EMA to examine the relationship between mood and eating behaviors in everyday life among women with subclinical disordered eating behaviors. Method Participants (N=127, age M=19.6, BMI M=25.5) completed 5 daily EMA reports on palmtop computers for 1 week. Assessments included measures of negative affect (NA) and eating-related behavior during eating (eating large amounts of food, loss of control over eating, restricting food intake) and non-eating episodes (skip eating to control weight/shape). Time-lagged multi-level models tested mood-eating behavior relationships. Results Higher NA did not precede any unhealthy eating and weight control behaviors. However, NA was higher when women reported eating large quantities of food, losing control over eating, and restricting food intake during their most recent eating episode, but not after skipping eating to control weight/shape. Discussion These findings elucidate processes in daily life that may influence the development and maintenance of unhealthy eating and weight control behaviors that, in turn, can inform interventions.

Restrictive eating in anorexia nervosa: Examining maintenance and consequences in the natural environment

“…21 Meals and snacks that were not defined as restrictive were classified as non-restrictive. Of note, the current definition for a restrictive eating episode (i.e., “ate as little as possible” but not “ate an excessive amount of food”) is similar to that used in a recent EMA study of college women with subclinical disordered eating (i.e., “Did you try to limit the amount of food you ate?”), 22 providing support for the validity of this approach for assessing restrictive eating episodes.…”

“…26 In addition, this assessment approach is very similar to that used in a recent EMA study of college women with subclinical disordered eating for assessing restrictive eating (i.e., “Did you try to limit the amount of food you ate?”), providing additional support for its utility. 22 …”

Depressed affect and dietary restraint in adolescent boys' and girls' eating in the absence of hunger

“…Thus, a task for future research may be to consider how to use experimental paradigms to evaluate stressors more salient to specific youth at-risk for food disinhibition. Studies of self-reported disinhibited eating behavior in the natural environment frequently characterize negative affect as a single construct (Berg, et al, 2014; Heron, Scott, Sliwinski, & Smyth, 2014; Ranzenhofer, et al, 2014), and there may be meaningful differences in depressed versus stressed affect, for example. Whether the intensity of a specific emotional experience has an influence on energy intake is also an important area of future research.…”

Depression, coping, hassles, and body dissatisfaction: Factors associated with disordered eating

“…Research estimates that approximately 8-13.5% of college women meet the criteria for clinically diagnosed eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa, bulima nervosa, or eating disorders not otherwise specified (Eisenberg, Nicklett, Roeder, & Kirz, 2011). In addition, negative moods (Heron, Scott, Sliwinski, & Smyth, 2014) and stress (Brewerton & Brady, 2014) seem to relate eating disorders. Diagnosable eating disorders emerge in the broader context of disordered eating, that is -engaging in practices such as restricting calories, eating less fat, skipping meals, using nonprescription diet pills, using laxatives, or inducing vomiting (Clemens, Thomb, Olds, & Gordon, 2008).…”