Negative affect and emotional eating: Daily dynamics and their links to difficulties in emotional regulation

Abstract

Emotional eating is considered a maladaptive coping strategy for negative affect. This study aimed to examine the daily relationship between negative affect and emotional eating, and further explore the role of emotion regulation in this process. Daily diary data was collected among 108 college students (Mean_age = 19.8 ± 1.51, 83.3 % women) to assess the dynamic relationships between negative affect and emotional eating over 14 days. Difficulties in emotion regulation was assessed at pre- and post-test. Results of dynamic structural equation modeling revealed that emotional eating predicted next day's negative affect (β = .06, 95 % Credible Interval [.01, .15]), but not vice versa. Moreover, four subscales of difficulties in emotion regulation at baseline—nonacceptance of emotional responses, difficulties in engaging in goal-directed behavior, impulse control difficulties, and limited access to emotion regulation strategies—significantly predicted the association between negative affect and emotional eating. This association, in turn, was associated with five subscales of difficulties in emotion regulation at posttest, including nonacceptance of emotional responses, difficulties in engaging in goal-directed behavior, impulse control difficulties, limited access to emotion regulation strategies, and lack of emotional clarity. Our findings suggest that emotional eating can reinforce negative affect the following day, especially in individuals with difficulties in emotion regulation. Further, when emotional eating and negative affect are strongly linked, this may be associated with the reinforcement of difficulties in emotion regulation. Whether negative affect can trigger emotional eating could not be determined by our study, and should be investigated with more intensive study designs.