No abstract

Insufficient average sleep duration has been inconsistently associated with poor diet and obesity risks in youth. Inconsistencies in findings across studies may be due to a general failure to examine associations in weekday versus weekend sleep. We hypothesized that greater variations in weekday and weekend sleep duration would be associated with more disinhibited eating behaviors, which, in turn, might be involved in the relationship between sleep and weight. We, therefore, examined, among healthy, non-treatment seeking youth, the associations of average weekly, weekend, and weekday sleep duration with eating in the absence of hunger (EAH), a disinhibited eating behavior associated with disordered eating and obesity. Sleep was assessed via actigraphy for 14 days. Participants completed a self-report measure of EAH. Adiposity was measured by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry. Linear regressions were used to test the associations of sleep duration with EAH and the associations of sleep duration and EAH, with fat mass. Among 123 participants (8–17 years, 52.0% female, and 30.9% with overweight), there was no significant association between average weekly sleep and EAH. Further, there was no significant association among average weekly sleep duration or EAH and fat mass. However, average weekday sleep was negatively associated, and average weekend sleep was positively associated, with EAH (ps < 0.02). Weekend “catch-up” sleep (the difference between weekend and weekday sleep) was positively associated with EAH (p < 0.01). Findings indicate that shorter weekday sleep and greater weekend “catch-up” sleep are associated with EAH, which may place youth at risk for the development of excess weight gain over time.

Background: Executive functioning (EF) difficulties may be associated with problems regulating eating behaviours. Few studies have evaluated this question in youth using diverse measures of EF or objective measures of energy intake. Methods:The current study used neuropsychological tasks and a laboratory test meal to evaluate the links between EF and youth's disinhibited eating patterns.Two-hundred-five nontreatment seeking youth (M age = 13.1 ± 2.8 years; M BMIz = 0.6 ± 1.0; 33.2% overweight; 54.1% female) completed tasks measuring decision making, general and food-specific behavioural disinhibition, willingness to delay gratification for food and money, cognitive flexibility, and working memory. Age (children vs adolescents) was examined as a moderator. All analyses adjusted for demographic factors, pubertal status, lean mass (kg), fat mass (%), height, general intellectual functioning, and depressive symptoms.Results: After adjusting for multiple comparisons, more general behavioural disinhibition was associated with greater total energy intake (P = .02), and poorer cognitive flexibility was associated with more fat intake (P = .03) across all ages. Poorer decision making in children (P = .04), but not adolescents (P = .24), was associated with greater fat intake. Food-specific behavioural disinhibition, the ability to delay gratification for both food and monetary rewards, and working memory were not significantly associated with youth's disinhibited eating patterns during a single meal.Conclusions: Most domains of EF were not associated with youth's disinhibited eating. Significant associations may highlight the need to target specific cognitive processes, particularly behavioural disinhibition, decision making, and cognitive flexibility, in potential intervention strategies for children's disinhibited eating. K E Y W O R D Schild, disinhibited eating, executive functioning, obesity