Secondary psychological outcomes in a controlled trial of Emotional Freedom Techniques and cognitive behaviour therapy in the treatment of food cravings

Abstract

The current study supports the hypothesis that psychological intervention is beneficial for treating psychological comorbidities of obesity and points to the role mental health issues may play in this area.

An Initial Investigation of Neural Changes in Overweight Adults with Food Cravings after Emotional Freedom Techniques

“…While speculatively, the neural changes indicated in this pilot study appear to compare to the self-reported food craving decreases in the current trial as well as previous EFT and food craving trials [19][20][21][22]. The lack of engagement in homework activities reported by participants (addressed next) and the relative deactivation of the brain activity during the post scans while viewing high caloric food images, suggests a correlation worth examining in larger future trials.…”

“…Finally and worthy of note is that while the EFT participants were encouraged to engage in the technique outside sessions, and reminder messages were sent by the lead therapist between sessions every week. However, they typically did not do so via self-report and this was also indicated in previous trials [19][20][21][22]. A recent two year follow-up of an 8-week online intervention program for overweight or obese adults found participants' food craving, perceived power of food, dietary restraint capabilities and all psychological distress symptoms (i.e.…”

“…These results revealed that EFT was capable of producing treatment effects that were clinically meaningful and comparable to a gold standard approach. Notably, EFT lasted longer over time than CBT for improvements in food cravings and anxious symptomology and subjects' food cravings, power over food choices, and dieting mentality at the 12-month follow-up [21,22].…”

“…Research has found EFT for to be extremely successful and durable over time for treatment of food cravings in overweight and obese adults [19][20][21]. A randomised clinical trial which originally offered a 4-week EFT treatment program to 96 overweight and obese participants with severe food cravings, and then assessed their progress six-and 12-months after treatment ended [19,20] found Body Mass Index (BMI), degree of food craving, individual's perceived power of food, restraint capabilities and psychological symptoms significantly improved.…”

Emotion-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in Comorbid Obesity With Binge Eating Disorder: A Pilot Study of Feasibility and Long-Term Outcomes

“…However, the low magnitude of the differences at the emotional level together with the modest efficacy in maintaining long-term weight loss (Cooper et al, 2010) and binge eating reduction (Juarascio et al, 2017;Palavras et al, 2017), indicate the need for improved interventions. In acknowledgment of the importance of emotions in obesity, new CBT programs have put greater emphasis on emotion regulation training, such as impulsive eating (Preuss et al, 2017), food cravings (Stapleton et al, 2017), emotional functioning (Buckroyd et al, 2006;Buckroyd and Rother, 2007), and emotion regulation skills (Pjanic et al, 2017). In general, these new CBT programs found encouraging results in terms of emotional functioning (Buckroyd et al, 2006;Pjanic et al, 2017;Stapleton et al, 2017), eating behavior (Preuss et al, 2017;Stapleton et al, 2017) and weight loss (Buckroyd et al, 2006;Preuss et al, 2017).…”