Time‐of‐day and day‐of‐week patterns of binge eating and relevant psychological vulnerabilities in binge‐eating disorder

Abstract

ObjectiveThe present study sought to characterize the temporal patterns of binge eating and theorized maintenance factors among individuals with binge‐eating disorder (BED).MethodEcological momentary assessment of 112 individuals and mixed‐effects models were used to characterize the within‐ and between‐day temporal patterns of eating behaviors (binge eating, loss of control only eating, and overeating only), positive and negative affect, emotion regulation difficulty, and food craving.ResultsRisk for binge eating and overeating only was highest around 5:30 p.m., with additional binge‐eating peaks around 12:30 and 11:00 p.m. In contrast, loss of control eating without overeating was more likely to occur before 2:00 p.m. Risk for binge eating, loss of control only eating, and overeating only did not vary across days in the week. There was no consistent pattern of change in negative affect throughout the day, but it decreased slightly on the weekend. Positive affect showed a decrease in the evenings and a smaller decrease on the weekend. The within‐day patterns of food craving, and to some extent emotion regulation difficulty, resembled the pattern of binge eating, with peaks around meal times and at the end of the night.DiscussionIndividuals with BED appear most susceptible to binge‐eating around dinner time, with heightened risk also observed around lunch time and late evening, though the effects were generally small. These patterns appear to most strongly mimic fluctuations in craving and emotion dysregulation, although future research is needed to test the temporal relationships between these experiences directly.Public SignificanceIt is unknown which times of the day and days of the week individuals with binge‐eating disorder are most at risk for binge eating. By assessing binge‐eating behaviors in the natural environment across the week, we found that individuals are most likely to binge in the evening, which corresponds to the times when they experience the strongest food craving and difficulty with regulating emotions.

Applying Machine Learning to Ecological Momentary Assessment Data to Identify Predictors of Future Loss-of-control Eating and Overeating in Adolescents: A Preliminary Investigation

“…Indeed, research has suggested trait-level moderators of the impact of emotions on binge eating in eating disorders (Culbert et al, 2016;Fischer et al, 2018), highlighting the potential utility of individual models. Time of day and contextual variables did not emerge as predictors of LOCE, despite research demonstrating that LOCE and binge eating are more likely to occur in the afternoon and evening (Forester et al, 2023). Results also failed to support our hypothesis that binge eating is more likely to occur when an individual is alone or at home.…”

Changes in affect longitudinally mediate associations between emotion regulation strategy use and disordered eating

“…First, we expanded our analyses to include purging and dieting in addition to binge eating. Nearly all the research to date on daily ER and disordered eating has focused on binge-eating phenotypes (Forester et al, 2023;Mikhail et al, 2022;Smith et al, 2021;Svaldi et al, 2019), with little known regarding how ER may impact other core disordered eating behaviors. Though ER difficulties are observed transdiagnostically across EDs (Brockmeyer et al, 2014;Prefit et al, 2019), evidence is more consistent regarding an association between NA and binge eating than NA and restrictive symptoms (Haedt-Matt & Keel, 2011;Haynos et al, 2015Haynos et al, , 2017Mikhail, 2021).…”

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Binge Eating Disorder: A Systematic Review

“…For example, family-related adverse life experiences (ALEs), especially early loss of caregivers, family separations, and detrimental parental interactions, negatively impact BN and BED patients [19]. Moreover, Forester and colleagues [20] demonstrated that specific times of the day (in particular, dinner time, but also lunch time and late evening) favour binge eating in BED patients, being the periods with the strongest food cravings and difficulties in emotional regulation.…”