Lauren Muhlheim, PsyD, is a certified eating disorders Self-esteem and eating behaviors eatign clinical psychologist who provides cognitive behaviiors psychotherapy. Amd has also been observed Sugar alternatives for reducing cravings when bfhaviors Self-esteem and eating behaviors low self-esteem do not achieve a societal flawless body shape or misinterpret their body shape, they are susceptible to environmental influences to conform to the cultural body ideal over time [ 53 ]. Franco-Paredes K, Mancilla-Diaz JM, Vázquez-Arévalo R, López-Aguilar X, Álvarez-Rayón G. Attitude of Poles towards their own health].

Self-esteem and eating behaviors -

In any case, change in self-esteem is usually facilitated by a change in other areas, such as the amelioration of eating-disorder psychopathology or improved interpersonal functioning. To find a therapist, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.

Dalle Grave R, Sartirana M, Calugi S. Complex cases and comorbidity in eating disorders. Assessment and management. Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature; Fairburn CG, Cooper Z, Shafran R, Bohn K, Hawker DM. Clinical perfectionism, core low self-esteem and interpersonal problems. In: Fairburn CG, editor.

Cognitive behavior therapy and eating disorders New York: The Guilford Press; Fennell MJ. Overcoming low self-esteem: A self-help guide using cognitive behavioural techniques 2nd ed. Riccardo Dalle Grave, M. He is the author of Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Adolescents with Eating Disorders.

Riccardo Dalle Grave M. Eating Disorders: The Facts. Self-Esteem Low Self-Esteem and Eating Disorders What to do when the two problems coexist.

Posted April 2, Reviewed by Vanessa Lancaster Share. THE BASICS. Key points Some people with eating disorders have an unconditional and pervasive poor opinion of their self-worth. The Body Positive is a non-profit organization that empowers individuals to cultivate self-love and a positive body image.

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Need Help - Find A Treatment Program Today. Eating Disorder Helplines The Alliance for Eating Disorders Awareness Helpline The Alliance for Eating Disorders Awareness Helpline offers support and resources for individuals dealing with eating disorders.

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Jan Feb Mar 6. View Calendar. Do you have a loved one battling an eating disorder and would like a better understanding of this disease? Our newsletter offers current eating disorder recovery resources and information. The results distinguished three factors that explained Table 1. Results of the confirmatory factor analysis with pre-set number of three factors for DEBQ.

As shown in Table 1 , specific positions in DEBQ were successfully ascribed to three main factors, prompting a decision to maintain the three-factor DEBQ structure. The developed version of the eating attitude questionnaire was then applied in the original studies to measure restrained and compulsive attitudes external and emotional eating in a population of young adults.

Descriptive statistics included frequencies and percentages for categorical variables and means with standard deviations for continuous variables. The Kolmogorov—Smirnov test was used to verify normal distributions.

The final element of statistical analyses included path analysis to confirm concordance between the theoretical model research model and the collected data. To verify assumptions about the influence of psychological variables on food-related behaviors, structural equation models with path diagrams were used.

Using linear equations, causal models were tested to determine to what extent the data agreed with the theoretical causality model.

Structural equation modeling was conducted on the full sample without stratification by groups e. All research variables were introduced into the model. On the basis of the numerical values of individual model parameter estimators, it can be determined whether indirect or direct influences of psychological variables on food-related behaviors exist.

Intercorrelations between the dependent variables and the paths that proved to be irrelevant, were omitted. The aim of the analysis was to identify psychological predictors of unhealthy restrained and compulsive eating attitudes in the sample of young women and men. Table 2. Analysis of the means for specific measure identified resilience as the strongest independent variable Self-esteem including both general and body self-esteem was below average.

Impulsivity and emotional intelligence fell within the range of average results. These results suggest that participants manifested high levels of mental resilience average emotional literacy and impulsivity, and below average general and body self-esteem.

As for the dependent variable describing unhealthy attitudes, results showed restrained eating to be most strongly manifested in the study sample slightly above average.

External and emotional eating were average. Interestingly, the mean results indicating low self-esteem were associated with above-average levels of restrained eating. This may suggest a significant socio-cultural influence on excessive pursuit of thinness among young adults, but this possibility was not tested in our analysis.

In the subsequent stage of the statistical procedure, we measured the strength of correlations among all the variables. Results are presented in Table 3. Table 3. A significant correlation was found between emotional intelligence and resilience, with weaker but still significant correlations between impulsivity, general self-esteem, and vitality.

Emotional intelligence and vitality were not significantly correlated with any of the unhealthy eating attitudes we tested. Higher emotional intelligence was associated with weaker impulsivity and weaker general self-esteem, but higher vitality.

Resilience significantly positively correlated with emotional intelligence, but negatively correlated with general self-esteem and impulsivity. Impulsivity also showed a significant negative correlation with resilience. Moreover, resilience showed a moderate positive correlation with vitality.

In terms of self-assessment, all of the component variables proved to be positively correlated with each other. General self-esteem was correlated with both body self-esteem and vitality. There was a significant but not very strong negative correlation between emotional eating and resilience, a significant moderate positive correlation between emotional eating and general self-esteem, and a weaker correlation with physical attractiveness.

Higher resilience was associated with weaker emotional eating and higher self-esteem was associated with higher emotional eating. Emotional eating was also correlated with impulsivity, but this correlation was not very strong.

Emotional eating showed a strong positive correlation with external eating attitude and a significant but weak correlation with restrained eating attitude. External eating was positively correlated with impulsivity levels, general self-esteem and physical attractiveness significant correlation but weak , but negatively correlated with resilience.

Hence, lower levels of resilience are associated with stronger excessive eating triggered by food smell or appearance, or effortless accessibility to food.

Restrained eating was significantly correlated only with general self-esteem. Stronger global elf-esteem but not body image , is associated with higher restrained eating levels. The next step of the analysis involved verifying sex-based differences.

Detailed results are presented in Table 4. Table 4. Comparative analysis of women and men in terms of mean values of the research variables.

Results showed that women scored higher on average in emotional intelligence compared to men, whereas external eating was stronger in men. However, the indicated variables fell within the range of mean average results, both in the group of women and the group of men.

There were no other significant differences by sex suggesting that sex does not influence unhealthy eating attitudes in any significant way. Table 5. Table 6. In women, significant but weak negative correlations were found between emotional eating and emotional intelligence and resilience.

Higher impulsivity and general self-esteem in the women were associated with higher levels of emotional eating. A significant and moderate correlation was also shown between externalizing eating behaviors and impulsivity, where higher impulsivity was associated with higher levels of external eating.

There was also a significant positive correlation between external eating and physical attractiveness, and a significant negative correlation between external eating and resilience. However, neither of these correlations were strong.

There was also a significant positive correlation between general self-esteem and restrained eating in the women. In men, significant and moderate correlations were shown between emotional eating and resilience and general self-esteem.

Higher resilience was associated with lower emotional eating behaviors, but higher general self-esteem was associated with higher emotional eating behaviors. Significant positive but weak correlations were found between emotional eating attitude and impulsivity, and physical attractiveness.

Significant but weak correlations were found between external eating and general self-esteem, and physical attractiveness. There was also a significant positive but weak correlation between general self-esteem including body image and restrained eating in the men. However, the additional analysis, did not show significant differences between the correlations obtained in the women and men.

A structural equation analysis was performed to identify important psychological predictors of unhealthy eating attitudes, a path analysis was performed.

Thus, the adopted theoretical model of independent variables resilience, impulsivity , intervening self-esteem, emotional intelligence and dependent variables restrained and external eating, emotional eating was empirically verified Figure 1.

Results of the path analysis presented in Figure 1 and Table 7 allow the below assumptions to be adopted. Table 7. Overall effects of the influence of variables with due account of indirect and direct effect represented in the path model.

Impulsivity had the strongest and most direct significant influence on both emotional eating and external eating.

In both cases the influence is positive, meaning higher impulsivity is associated with higher levels of emotional eating. Impulsivity proved not to have any significant impact on restrained eating. Resilience proved to have a significant impact on all eating attitude types, with a direct negative effect on emotional eating and external eating, meaning that higher resilience is associated with lower levels of emotional eating and decreased tendency to respond to triggers of smell, appearance and easy accessibility of food.

Resilience also proved to have a low, yet significant positive direct effect on restrained eating, where greater resilience is associated with higher levels of restrained eating.

Moreover, resilience proved to have a direct negative impact on self-esteem including body self-esteem ; and self-esteem as an intervening variable proved to have a strong positive effect on restrained eating. Higher general self-esteem and body self-esteem were associated with restrained eating.

Interestingly, resilience proved to have a significant positive direct effect on emotional intelligence, yet emotional intelligence did not act as an intervening variable that would explain any of the examined types of eating attitudes.

In turn, impulsivity also proved to have a significant direct yet negative effect on emotional intelligence, with emotional intelligence showing no significant correlation with eating attitudes.

Only self-esteem proved to act as an intervening variable in compulsive eating attitudes. These results suggest that emotional intelligence has no evident impact on eating attitudes. Men and women presented similar levels on all measures. Comparisons of correlation coefficients did not show relevant significant statistical differences by sex.

Impulsivity is indeed more related to external eating in women. However, it is also significantly related to the second composition of compulsive eating attitude — emotional eating, both in women and men.

This configuration of psychological variables allows one to describe the women and men in the sample as a homogeneous group of individuals who do not manifest eating disorders, which confirms accurate sampling for the study.

The configuration of intensity for all measures confirms results often obtained by individuals in a healthy population people who do not manifest various types of eating disorders , which also is reflected in research conducted by Boyd , who showed that compared to individuals suffering from eating disorders, healthy people show less disordered emotional functioning, higher ability to cope with negative emotions in stressful situations, better ability to cope with stress and lower level of psychopathological traits.

Other studies have also indicated that psychopathological traits of excessive anxiety, depression, impulsivity, emotional dysregulation, and negative coping are important criteria that differentiate healthy people from those with eating disorders Grant et al. There was a high level of resilience in our study participants, below-average general self-esteem combined with body self-esteem.

This result may be specific to this particular sample of young educated individuals mainly students. However, the results may also suggest that, regardless of their personality traits, the participants demonstrated lowered self-esteem when assessing themselves and their bodies physical attractiveness as well as poor acceptance of their own bodies.

A more in-depth study and verification is required to identify whether the results indicate strong social-cultural influence on the assessment of body attractiveness for a young person. The original study findings also indicated a significant positive correlation between resilience and emotional intelligence, which seems understandable and is also reflected in other research, showing that a high level of resilience is positively correlated with emotional intelligence, helping to cope with the experienced negative emotional states, ensuring hope and facilitating problem-solving in crisis situations Curran et al.

Similar findings confirming that impulsivity regulates the release of experienced emotional states through compulsive uncontrolled binge eating emotional eating can be found in many studies Macht, ; Ouwens et al. Many studies also confirm the importance of emotional disorders in binge eating and bulimia Pascual et al.

In turn, the correlation between impulsivity and external eating is also present in other studies Rosval et al. It should be noted that impulsivity proved to have a significant but not very strong negative direct impact on emotional intelligence, in our original study. In modern literature, we can also find research that reports significant relationships between the manner of coping with stress and low emotional intelligence in people with eating disorders Boyd, ; Matheson et al.

We also encounter research reporting that in people with a strong restrained eating attitude, suppressing and denying their own emotional states and various stimuli coming from the body may result in lower emotional intelligence Eizaguirre et al.

Interestingly, the findings in the original study suggest that emotional intelligence proved not to have a significant direct effect on restrained and compulsive eating. However, it remains significantly correlated with impulsivity.

Thus, there is a significant negative correlation: the higher impulsivity, the lower emotional intelligence — which does not have to stand for simultaneous existence of a tendency to resort to compulsive or restrained eating.

Perhaps, this result shows that for exposition of compulsive or restrained eating emotional intelligence has a lesser impact than other variables in the original research model.

Nonetheless, one should reflect on these findings in the context of slightly different results obtained by some other researchers. As was already mentioned above, in this original study impulsivity proved significantly correlated with emotional intelligence, yet not correlated with restrained and compulsive eating.

This result does not exclude the possibility that impulsivity and emotional intelligence may affect other types of impulsive behaviors, such as aggressive and self-aggressive behaviors. Here, it is worth referencing studies that show impulsivity is correlated with a tendency to take excessive risk and an inability to postpone gratification Moeller et al.

There is research that confirms the meaning of impulsivity in generating compulsive eating attitudes in people suffering from bulimia Grzesiak et al. However, it should be recalled that the study group did not include participants with symptoms of eating disorders, which may be why study participants did not show a significant correlation between level of emotional intelligence and level of restrained and compulsive eating.

One should also take into account research limitations stemming from the small number and specificity of the study group and assume that the above findings may be specific to that group. The findings show that aside from impulsivity, resilience acts as an important predictor in explaining both compulsive and restrained eating attitudes in young people both men and women.

The strength of influence of resilience on all three types of unhealthy eating attitudes is also confirmed by the finding that resilience had a significant indirect effect by means of self-esteem on restrained eating and emotional eating.

In the case of the indicated correlations, resilience proved to be negatively correlated with external and emotional eating, meaning that the higher the resilience, the lower the intensity of the above-indicated unhealthy eating attitudes.

If one adds to this the other result that showed greater resilience was associated with lower self-esteem, there appears to be a need to explain this state of affairs. On the one hand, we can say that this result may be characteristic only for the examined sample and may be the result of unintended methodological errors in how the research procedure was carried out.

On the other hand, it is worth subjecting it to a more in-depth analysis with regard to psychological and socio-cultural functioning of the study participants, who were raised in a Western culture, where the binding body image standards serve as a significant indicator of general self-esteem Izydorczyk and Sitnik-Warchulska, Socio-cultural impact on young adults promotes standards of success, ambition, and concentration on appearance and body.

The below average self-esteem among the participants would confirm their tendency to lower their self-esteem, and would confirm that the obtained result indicated a tendency to prefer compulsive attitudes Tables 2 — 4.

According to the psychoanalytic perspective, compulsive eating can be used to produce a sense of feeling alive and build self-esteem make the life sweeter Jacoby, Such results may indicate the narcissistic character of self-esteem in contemporary young adults. The relationship between self-esteem and narcissism as predictors of eating disorders was indicated by Boucher et al.

Compulsive episodes of eating may, according to Tamhane , be a continuation of restrictive eating behavior, helping to maintain self-esteem in the context of the need to implement sociocultural patterns of appearance.

However, the findings warrant future research. The significant positive correlation between self-esteem and emotional eating, and external, and weaker, but still significant, with restrained eating confirmed in the original study together with the above-listed arguments allows one to verify the meaning of socio-cultural influence on self-esteem, including body image and conclude that the value of this measure may remain negatively correlated with the obtained high score for resilience among study participants.

The measurement of resilience levels may confirm high psychological resources of the examined young adults, whereas their resources pertaining to the capacity to evoke positive emotions, coping with stress, overcoming frustration, etc. As shown by other studies, low self-esteem in young people, particularly women, which manifests in lower self-satisfaction, lower sense of self-worth and self-acceptance, constitutes a significant predictor for eating disorders Stice, Low self-esteem is significantly correlated with disordered eating patterns such as anorexic attitude or binge eating Paterson et al.

However, there are studies showing that mental resilience protects against self-assessment of the body McGrath et al. The authors of this study find it difficult to unequivocally interpret the results of their original study. Without doubt, the search for answers regarding the strength and direction of correlations between self-esteem and resilience requires further research and a more precise research model expanded to involve a more extensive and separate measurement of body image and self-esteem in both young women and men.

The conducted studies were characterized by certain limitation that pertained to both sampling and the research procedure. First, the sampled study group despite being sampled in line with the objective and the required research procedure could constitute a specific group of women and men from a specific background, which could limit the interpretation of the results to other populations.

However, the maintained common socio-demographic criteria for sampling and the number of participants support the reliability of the conducted study.

Second, the current study relied on self-report measures. Third, the study group was limited to one period of life, without disorders, and with a normal BMI.

It would be interesting to compare the studied group with people in other developmental periods or presenting disordered eating behaviors e. Research on the dynamics of psychological processes and motivation for engaging in eating attitudes, particularly in the aspect of seeking their psychological predictors, would require future longitudinal studies, which are difficult to carry out.

These would be more reliable and precise in assessing the research material. Nonetheless, the time-consuming character of such studies and the limited ability to conduct them, this form of research procedure was rejected. With the pre-set research objectives and the research procedure in mind, as well as with due account of methods for measuring variables acknowledged in the literature it was concluded that the adopted assumption and research procedure could be implemented by means of transversal studies.

However, it is worth pointing out that the presented research concerned a group of young adults, which does not happen often. A number of selected personal factors have been analyzed, which are indicated in the literature as important for health and eating behavior.

A group of healthy people was examined, which may be a source of effective preventive methods, especially in the area of eating disorders. This seems particularly important in the context of the results related to a negative correlation between resilience and self-esteem and a positive correlation between self-esteem and compulsive and restrained eating attitudes.

The idea of a relationship with the influence of socio-cultural and narcissistic self-assessment should be taken into account see Discussion. Future longitudinal studies on a study group of young men and women in long-term research relation although difficult to implement would ensure a more extensive measurement of processes underlying the development of unhealthy eating attitudes.

To sum up the findings of our original study and the performed analyses, we can put forward the following conclusions. First, resilience and impulsivity are psychological predictors that significantly and directly explain unhealthy eating attitudes, both limited food intake in daily diet resilience and compulsive eating impulsivity and resilience.

The higher the resilience, the higher the tendency to restrain eating, and lower to compulsive eating. High level of impulsivity are associated with high levels of compulsive eating. An important psychological intervening variable in generating unhealthy eating attitudes proved to be a higher level of self-esteem among young people, both men and women.

Emotional intelligence, which remains correlated with resilience, proved an independent variable with no effect on unhealthy eating attitudes.

Second, no significant differences were observed between the female and male participants regarding psychological variables they manifested, which were verified in the research model: resilience, self-esteem, and impulsivity, and regarding manifested restrained eating and emotional eating.

Beyond one dependence, studied women and men did not differ in correlations between psychological factors and compulsive and restrained eating. Young women proved to have a higher dependence between impulsivity and a type of compulsive eating, that is external eating.

This kind of eating attitude is related to body image in women and men. Body image also seems to be important for men using restrained eating behavior. The study findings may support promotion of preventive treatment and educational programs implemented particularly among adolescents and young adults to support development of psychological resources resilience, self-esteem.

One should notice that the study findings are useful in raising awareness on the function of food in daily life biological, emotional, and social proposed in educational programs for adolescents and young adults to prevent growth of unhealthy eating patterns and development of eating disorders stimulated by socio-cultural factors.

Preventive programs should include increasing resources such as resilience, as well as awareness of the presented self-esteem including body image in the context of socio-cultural standards that are currently promoted.

The datasets generated for this study are available on request to the corresponding author. BI contributed to the conception, design, and planning of the study, analysis of the data, interpretation of the results, drafting of the manuscript and revising it critically for important intellectual content, final approval of the version to be published, and agrees to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

KS-W contributed to the conception and design of the study, interpretation of the results, drafting of the manuscript and revising it critically for important intellectual content, final approval of the version to be published, and agrees to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

SL contributed to the conception and design of the study, analysis of the data, final approval of the version to be published, and agrees to be accountable for all aspects of the work. AL contributed to the conception of the study, acquisition of the data, final approval of the version to be published, and agrees to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. Allison, D. Handbook of Assessment Methods for Eating Behaviors and Weight-related Problems. Measures, Theory and Research.

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