Early Effects of Body Satisfaction on Emotional Eating: Tailored Treatment Impacts via Psychosocial Mediators in Women with Obesity.

Abstract

It was proposed that emotional eating is a critical factor to address early in a behavioral obesity treatment for women to improve their long-term weight-loss, which has been problematic. Poor body image/body satisfaction is a likely predictor of emotional eating. Possible social cognitive theory-based mediators of the body satisfaction-emotional eating relationship having treatment implications include disturbed mood and self-efficacy for controlled eating. Women with obesity volunteered for a community-based weight loss program. After confirming salience of disturbed mood and self-efficacy for controlling one's eating as mediators of the body satisfaction-emotional eating relationship at baseline, a 3-month protocol emphasizing exercise and targeting those mediators through a focus on self-regulation was developed and administered to the treatment group (n = 86). The control group (n = 51) received matched time in typical, educationally based weight-loss processes. Improvements in body satisfaction, emotional eating, disturbed mood, and self-efficacy for controlled eating from baseline-month 3 were each significantly greater in the treatment group. Further analysis of the treatment group found that changes in disturbed mood and self-efficacy completely mediated the body satisfaction change-emotional eating change relationship and neither age nor race (White/Black) were significant moderators. Improvement in emotional eating from baseline-month 3 significantly predicted lost weight over both 3 months and with changes incorporating a 6-month follow up. Findings confirmed the importance of addressing the relationship between body satisfaction and emotional eating over the critical initial months of a behavioral obesity treatment for women through targeting improvements in mood and controlled eating-related self-efficacy.