The Eating Disorder inventory in evaluation of impaired eating behaviour in subjects requesting nutritional consultation

Abstract

The present study evaluated impaired eating behaviour in women seeking participation in a diet-based programme of weight reduction or achievement of ideal body weight. Forty-seven obese, 42 overweight and 14 normal-weight subjects, attending an Italian university outpatient clinic completed the Eating Disorder Inventory (EDI). Forty-eight mothers of primary school children (25 normal-weight and 23 overweight) were used as controls. The EDI consists of 8 subscales, 3 evaluating psychopathology related to eating disorders (drive for thinness, bulimia, body dissatisfaction) and 5 evaluating general psychopathology (intereoceptive awareness, ineffectiveness, maturity fears, perfectionism, interpersonal distrust). Significantly altered scores in the first three subscales were observed both in normal-weight and overweight outpatients compared to the controls. The overweight outpatients scored higher than the obese patients in terms of drive for thinness and bulimia and higher than the normal-weight women for terms of bulimia, body dissatisfaction and drive for thinness. The overweight controls scored significantly higher than the normal-weight controls in the first three subscales in the remaining subscales, mean values were also higher in the overweight group, though significance was only reached in the interpersonal distrust and interoceptive awareness subscales. Impaired eating behaviour is frequent in subjects seeking participation in weight reduction or ideal body weight achievement programmes.

Interoception, eating behaviour and body weight

“…Recent experimental work is also in line with this interpretation, as deficits in interoception have been shown to be associated with a reduced appetitive sensitivity to the energy content of food (36), suggesting that appetite signals are detected and/or perceived differently among individuals with reduced interoceptive ability. Our finding linking lower interoceptive accuracy to higher BMI is consistent with some previous research that has measured interoceptive accuracy using objective laboratory tasks (13,14) and self-report questionnaires (37). Poorer interoceptive accuracy but not attention being associated with higher BMI may indicate that attending to internal signals alone is not protective against heavier body weight, unless one is able to accurately perceive those internal signals.…”

Psychopathological factors and personality dimensions on dysfunctional eating behaviors in a sample of individuals with obesity

“…Furthermore, the hypothesis that obesity may be the result of an ED has been increasingly accepted in recent years ( Weiss et al, 2020 ), suggesting that in these cases the diagnosis of obesity could be secondary to a well-known clinical condition (such as BED or bulimia). Individuals with obesity and those with an ED share common psychological and behavioral characteristics ( Iorio et al, 2000 ). According to Prefit et al (2019) , dysfunctional eating behaviors could represent maladaptive strategies for regulating negative emotional states.…”

The Nexus of Training Duration, Body Image, Nutritional Practices, and Mental Health: Insights from a Strength Training Cohort

“…Body image satisfaction: To distinguish body image satisfaction between strengthtrained men and women, we measured different levels with various body parts using the nutritional disorder inventory [34], which included a numeric scale (1 (never) to 6 (always)) and a body silhouette scale (1 being thinnest, 9 most voluminous).…”