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Emotion and overeating behavior: effects of alexithymia and emotional regulation on overweight and obesity

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Abstract

Purpose

Obesity and overweight are significant risk factors for many serious diseases. Several studies have investigated the relationship between emotional regulation and overweight or obesity in people with eating disorders. Although a few studies have explored alexithymia in individuals with severe obesity without eating disorders, no attention has been paid to individuals with overweight and preclinical form of obesity. This study aims to assess whether overweight and obesity are related to emotional dysregulation and alexithymia.

Methods

The study involved 111 undergraduate students who had not been diagnosed with an eating disorder. The sample was divided into two groups according to their body mass index (BMI): normal weight (N = 55) and overweight (N = 56). All of them completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), the Emotional Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ), and the Eating Disorder Inventory-2 (EDI-2).

Results

Results showed higher levels of alexithymia, and specifically higher difficulty in identifying feelings and an externally oriented thought, in participants with overweight. Multiple correlation analysis highlighted the positive relations between some EDI-2 subscales and both alexithymia and emotional regulation scores. Linear regressions revealed a significant relationship between body BMI and both alexithymia and emotional regulation strategies.

Conclusions

The condition of overweight/obesity seems to be associated with higher emotional dysregulation compared to normal weight condition. It is essential to study this relationship because it could represent a risk factor for the worsening of problems related to overeating and excessive body weight. These findings suggest that an integrated approach aimed at considering the promotion of emotional regulation could contribute to the effectiveness of a program designed to reduce overweight and obesity.

Level of evidence

Level III: case-control analytic study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Psicologia Dinamica e Clinica, Università di Roma “Sapienza”, Via degli Apuli, 1, 00185, Rome, Italy

    Maria Casagrande

  2. Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università di Roma “Sapienza”, Via dei Marsi, 78, 00185, Rome, Italy

    Ilaria Boncompagni, Giuseppe Forte, Angela Guarino & Francesca Favieri

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  1. Maria Casagrande
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Correspondence to Maria Casagrande.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Department of Dynamic and Clinical Psychology of the University of Rome “Sapienza” (approval number: 0000197) and with the Helsinki declaration.

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This article is part of topical collection on Personality and eating and weight disorders.

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Casagrande, M., Boncompagni, I., Forte, G. et al. Emotion and overeating behavior: effects of alexithymia and emotional regulation on overweight and obesity. Eat Weight Disord 25, 1333–1345 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40519-019-00767-9

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