Emotional eating in women with generalized anxiety disorder

Abstract

Introduction: Individuals diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) search for pleasurable foods to avoid their negative emotional experiences. An ineffective regulation of negative emotions may be a risk factor for emotional eating, leading to suffering, dysfunctional behaviors and weight gain. The aim of this study is to understand the relationship between emotional dysregulation and emotional eating, investigating potential mediators as the intensity of the worry, avoidance of internal experiences, mindfulness and self-compassion in female anxious patients. Methods: Participants from a randomized clinical trial diagnosed with GAD answered the instruments at baseline: Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS), Three Factor Eating Questionnaire (TFEQ-R21), Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ), Action and Acceptance Questionnaire (AAQ), Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), and Self-Compassion Scale (SCS) in this cross-sectional study. We estimated Pearson correlation coefficients and performed mediation analyses. Results: We evaluated 51 individuals and 34 female participants completed all the questionnaires. Our data showed that emotional eating was positively correlated with emotional dysregulation (r=0.593; p<0.001), worry trait (r=0.402; p=0.018), and avoidance of internal experiences (r=0.565; p<0.001), whereas it was negatively correlated with self-compassion (r=-0.590; p<0.001) and mindful state (r=-0.383; p=0.026).Moreover, we demonstrated that self-compassion mediates the relationship between emotional dysregulation and emotional eating (ab product estimate = 0.043, 95% CI [0.003 to 0.084]). Conclusion: Our findings could add to the literature by identifying psychological factors that could mediate the association between emotional dysregulation and emotional eating, allowing more effective eating behavior intervention targets in patients with GAD.