Emotional Eating and Obesity

Abstract

The first time that terms such as food addiction and addictive eating were mentioned was in 1956, in an article by T.G. Randolph. Recently, from a psychosomatic point of view, some authors have linked obesity and food addiction. Along with the concept of food addiction (derived from the similarities between the consumption of certain foods and "substance addictions"), a couple of questions seem to arise: What if it's not just the particular food (the substance) that we are addicted to? Could it be that we are addicted to something else that makes us eat it? Thus, the concept of eating addiction has its own set of particulars. It brings the attention back to the individual and not the external substance (the food or ingredient). The focus on confronting the obesity problem should be moved away from the food itself (the addictive substance) to the person's act of eating (the addictive behavior). Undoubtedly, there are many links between emotions and overweight/obesity. This chapter aims to review the current state of this field of study which is the emotional basis of obesity (at least a particular case of obesity and weight-related disorders).

The Psycho-Affective Roots of Obesity: Results from a French Study in the General Population

“…We examined the extent to which obese people differ in their emotionally driven and addictive-like eating behaviors not only from normal-weight but also overweight people in a sample from the French general population. We confirmed previous findings that have been reported in high BMI population, by showing that the two high BMI groups reported higher levels of depressed mood, eating less intuitively but more in response to their negative emotions, and that they presented more severe and/or frequent symptoms of addictive-like eating behaviors than normal-weight people [ 34 , 54 , 55 , 56 ]. In addition, we found an increase in FA diagnosis prevalence (as defined by the mYFAS), with the odds for presenting the condition being more than four times higher among the obese group and more than two times higher among the overweight group than among the normal-weight people.…”

“…Combined with the fact that Obese individuals also reported eating even more than the Overweight participants when facing negative emotions or situations, our study further supports the suggestion of a bidirectional link between obesity and depression, more particularly, with the atypical depression subtype [ 54 , 61 , 62 ]. Emotional eating has been shown to be (i) exacerbated in obese women, (ii) associated with both consumption of highly palatable food and weight gain [ 9 , 55 ] and (iii) it is a negative factor for post-bariatric surgery weight management outcomes [ 63 ]. Moreover, an emerging line of evidence points out that negative EE acts as a mediator between depression and obesity and that it may be a marker of atypical depression [ 28 , 31 , 32 ].…”

Resilience effects in food consumption behaviour at the time of Covid-19: perspectives from Italy

“…A common eating pattern may be triggered by stressful events which can be defined as emotional eating. In this case, individuals tend to turn to food for psychological comfort rather than physiological needs ( Jáuregui-Lobera and Montes-Martínez, 2020 ). This tendency is aimed at particular kinds of foods whose consumption evokes a psychologically comfortable and pleasurable state for a person, as the category of comfort foods ( Wansink et al., 2003 ).…”

Covid-19 salgını sonrası yetişkin bireylerin beslenme alışkanlıklarındaki değişikliklerin değerlendirilmesi

“…Duygu durumunun beslenme üzerine etkileri uzun yıllardır üzerinde çalışılan bir konudur. 16 Depresyon, anksiyete, stres gibi duygusal durumlar besin alımını arttırabildiği gibi bazı bireylerde ise tam tersi yönde azaltmaktadır. 17,18 Jayne ve ark.…”

“…Erişim yeri: http://www.tdd.org.tr/index.php/duyurul ar/69-covid-19-beslenme-onerileri. 16 Nisan 2020'de erişildi.…”