Counselors and therapists can help you deal with your feelings. Nutritionists and dietitians can help you identify your eating patterns and get you on track with a better diet. Fitness experts can get your body's feel-good chemicals firing through exercise instead of food.

If you're worried about your eating habits, talk to your doctor. They can help you reach set goals and put you in touch with professionals who can help you get on a path to a new, healthier relationship with food.

KidsHealth For Teens Emotional Eating. en español: Comer por causas emocionales. Medically reviewed by: Mary L. Gavin, MD. Listen Play Stop Volume mp3 Settings Close Player. Larger text size Large text size Regular text size.

What Is Emotional Eating? Physical Hunger vs. Emotional Hunger We're all emotional eaters to some extent who hasn't suddenly found room for dessert after a filling dinner? Next time you reach for a snack, check in and see which type of hunger is driving it.

Physical hunger: comes on gradually and can be postponed can be satisfied with any number of foods means you're likely to stop eating when full doesn't cause feelings of guilt Emotional hunger: feels sudden and urgent may cause specific cravings e.

Also ask yourself: Am I stressed, sad, or anxious over something, like school, a social situation, or at home? Has there been an event in my life that I'm having trouble dealing with?

Am I eating more than usual? Do I eat at unusual times, like late at night? Do other people in my family use food to soothe their feelings too? Breaking the Cycle Managing emotional eating means finding other ways to deal with the situations and feelings that make someone turn to food.

Tips to Try Try these tips to help get emotional eating under control. Explore why you're eating and find a replacement activity.

Too often, we rush through the day without really checking in with ourselves. Pause before you reach for food. Are you hungry or is it something else? For example: If you're bored or lonely: Call or text a friend or family member.

If you're stressed out: Try a yoga routine or go outside for walk or run. Or listen to some feel-good tunes and let off some steam by dancing around your room until the urge to eat passes. If you're tired: Rethink your bedtime routine. Set a bedtime that allows you to get enough sleep and turn off electronics at least 1 hour before that time.

If you're eating to procrastinate: Open those books and get that homework over with. You'll feel better afterward truly! Write down the emotions or events that trigger your eating. One of the best ways to keep track is with a mood and food journal. Write down what you ate, how much, and how you were feeling e.

Were you really hungry or just eating for comfort? Through journaling, you'll start to see patterns between what you feel and what you eat.

BED is characterized by the consumption of a very large amount of food in a relatively short period of time, and often the individual eats so fast that he or she is not aware of what is being eaten or how it tastes.

While binging, a person feels out of control and is unable to stop eating even though he or she likely wants to stop. Those who binge are typically unhappy about their behavior, and most episodes occur alone in a private setting, such as a bedroom, office, or automobile.

The causes of BED are unknown, but genetics, biological factors, long-term dieting, and psychological issues increase the risk. Although people of any age can suffer from BED, the condition is most prevalent in the late teen years to early 20s.

A number of factors increase the risk of developing BED. Family Background: Individuals may have an eating disorder if their parents or siblings have or had an eating disorder. This indicates that genes enhance the risk of eating-disorder development.

Dieting: Dieting or restricting calories during the day may trigger an urge to binge eat, especially if the person suffers from depression. Many people with BED have a history of long-time dieting. Psychological Issues: Triggers for binging include stress, poor body image, and the availability of preferred binge foods.

Unfortunately, many people with BED have negative feelings about themselves, including their accomplishments and skills. Emotional eating is the tendency to respond to stressful and difficult feelings by eating, even in the absence of physical hunger.

Emotional eating or emotional hunger often manifests as a craving for high-caloric or high-carbohydrate foods with minimal nutritional value.

These foods, often referred to as comfort foods , include ice cream, cookies, chocolate, chips, french fries, and pizza, among others. Consequently, stress is associated with both weight gain and weight loss. The primary difference between emotional eating and binge eating is in the amount of food consumed.

By definition, binge eating refers to eating to a highly uncomfortably full point, whereas emotional eating may involve lower caloric consumption or irregular meal volumes. Emotional eating may also be part of an emotional disorder, such as depression, bulimia, or other mental illnesses.

Emotional eating is thought to result from a number of factors rather than a single cause. Some research shows that girls and women are at higher risk for emotional eating and therefore at higher risk for eating disorders. However, other research indicates that, in some populations, men are more likely to eat in response to feelings of depression or anger and women are more likely to eat excessively in response to failure of a diet.

The pathophysiology of emotional eating is insufficiently known. Glucagon-like peptide 1 GLP-1 , a postprandial hormone, plays a role in feeding behavior by signaling satiety in the brain.

GLP-1 receptor agonists, which are used to treat type 2 diabetes, promote weight loss. Many studies have investigated the association between emotional eating and responses to food cues in brain areas involved in satiety, as well as GLP-1 receptor agonist—induced effects on these brain responses.

This disruption of cortisol secretion not only can promote weight gain, but also can influence where on the body excess fat develops. Some studies have shown that stress and elevated cortisol tend to cause fat deposition in the abdominal area.

This fat deposition is strongly correlated with the development of cardiovascular disease, including heart attacks and strokes.

Part of the stress response often includes increased appetite to supply the body with the fuel it needs for the fight-or-flight response, resulting in cravings for so-called comfort foods.

People who have been subjected to chronic rather than short-term stress e. The goals for treatment of BED are to reduce eating binges and to achieve healthy eating habits. Because binge eating can correlate with negative emotions, treatment may also address any other mental-health issues, such as depression.

Whether in individual or group sessions, psychotherapy can help teach patients how to exchange unhealthy habits for healthy ones and reduce binging episodes. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy CBT : CBT may help patients cope better with the factors that can trigger binge eating episodes, such as negative feelings about their body or depressed mood.

CBT can also lead to an improved sense of control over behavior and can help regulate eating patterns. Interpersonal Psychotherapy: This form of therapy is a reasonable alternative to CBT as first-line treatment for BED. According to the theoretical foundation of interpersonal psychotherapy, binge eating results from an unresolved problem in at least one of four possible areas: grief, interpersonal-role dispute, role transition, and interpersonal deficit.

Interpersonal psychotherapy focuses on relationships with other people, with the goal of improving interpersonal skills how the patient relates to others, including family, friends, and coworkers.

This may help reduce binge eating that is triggered by problematic relationships and unhealthy communication skills. Dialectical Behavioral Psychotherapy: Dialectical behavior therapy consists of teaching skills for management of problematic behaviors, such as binge eating, that are associated with emotional dysregulation.

This type of therapy includes protocols for managing therapy-disrupting behavior and more severely affected patients who exhibit self-injurious and life-threatening behavior. Dialectical behavior therapy promotes skills related to mindful eating, emotional regulation, and the management of unpleasant or painful circumstances and feelings associated with binge eating.

Although medication is useful for treating BED, it is generally regarded as less efficacious than psychotherapy; therefore, most patients may prefer psychotherapy. However, pharmacotherapy may be less time-consuming or less expensive.

On that basis, it is reasonable to employ pharmacotherapy as first-line treatment for patients who prefer medication and decline psychotherapy, as well as for those who do not have access to psychotherapy.

It should be noted that although the following agents can be helpful in controlling binge or emotional eating episodes, they may not have much impact on weight reduction. This stimulant can be habit-forming and abused.

Common side effects include dry mouth and insomnia, but more serious side effects can occur. The drug should be discontinued if binge eating does not improve. Topiramate Topamax : This anticonvulsant has been found to reduce binge eating episodes. However, because side effects such as dizziness, nervousness, sleepiness, and trouble concentrating can occur, patients should discuss the risks and benefits with their healthcare provider.

Antidepressants: Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors e.

An accredited mindfulness practitioner Lattimore delivered the course. The intervention period lasted 8-week inclusive of pre- and post-intervention assessment.

Over six consecutive weeks classes were delivered for 2. One week prior to the intervention start date, participants who had enrolled completed questionnaire measures and informed consent online, and attended laboratory assessment to complete the stop-signal task.

Following completion of the course, participants returned to repeat the stop-signal task, repeated the questionnaires again, and were debriefed about the purpose of the research. Three cases were identified as anomalies on the SSRT measure as RTs were below what would be expected as realistic.

These scores were removed prior to analysis leaving 11 cases for analysis of this variable. All questionnaire measures were normally distributed thus all 14 cases were used in analysis.

Paired sample t tests were conducted to test differences in measures between baseline and end of intervention. Table 2 displays relevant means and associated statistics. There were significant reductions in stress and cue-driven eating and improvements in behavioural and self-reported impulse control.

This implies that by the end of intervention, participants were experiencing less stress and less prone to reward motivated eating and impulsive behaviour. Regarding intuitive eating measures, participants reported stronger tendency to respond to internal hunger and satiety signals and a stronger tendency to respond to physical sensations rather than emotional cues to eat.

Although the difference in emotional eating scores showed a reduction in the tendency to eat for emotional reasons, the reduction was not significant. Mindfulness scores did not differ from baseline to end of intervention. Emotional eating is a construct that arguably requires refinement to reflect its multifaceted nature [ 4 ] so that weight-loss interventions can accurately assess the impact of emotional eating on outcomes [ 10 , 27 ].

The aim of the present study was to assess the unidimensional aspect of emotional eating to determine how a mindfulness-based intervention may attenuate emotional eating and its potential correlates: impulse control, cue-reactivity, ability to discriminate between physical and emotional cues to eat intuitive eating , and stress.

The effect size estimates and associated confidence intervals indicate a strong effect for change in intuitive eating scores 2. Additionally, a reduced tendency to act impulsively in response to negative emotions and improved response inhibition 1 SD approx.

were observed. A weaker effect for cue-driven eating 0. Although similar a reduction 0. for emotional eating and increase for mindfulness scores was observed, the confidence intervals for these effects and adjusted significance levels suggest that the sample was not large enough to draw reliable conclusions about the effect of the intervention on these two measures.

The distinctive feature of the intervention was a focus on an array of psychological factors related to emotional eating and not on weight loss or dietary change. Without an active control, it is not possible to determine which element of the intervention influenced change in parameters measured.

Mindfulness meditation can produce effective attention regulation, emotion regulation, and enhanced executive function [ 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 ]. It is plausible to assume that the MBeeat intervention created the conditions that enabled participants to re-calibrate their relationship with food using mindfulness.

This explanation can be supported in part by the evidence reviewed regarding the positive effects of mindfulness on varied measures of cue-driven and emotional eating [ 31 , 32 , 44 , 49 , 50 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 ]. However, until a randomized trial is conducted to disentangle the meditation and educational elements compared to an active control such conclusions warrant cautious interpretation.

To date, mindfulness-based interventions for weight loss have indicated that adding a mindfulness component to weight-loss interventions has the potential to strengthen their effectiveness [ 44 , 47 , 48 , 50 , 52 ].

The current study presented a case for mindfulness training occurring before weight loss is attempted, to specifically address psychological traits that underpin overeating and undermine weight-loss efforts.

The outcomes accord with the evidence that psychological traits associated with weight gain should be targets for intervention [ 28 , 46 , 47 , 48 ].

Evidence is lacking regarding intervention prior to weight loss to address emotional eating and its correlates. The notable effect sizes in the current study suggest that emotional eating and its correlates can be modified using mindfulness techniques and thus may prepare individuals better for weight-loss intervention.

Furthermore, the evidence that probable correlates of emotional eating change as a result of the Mbeeat intervention suggests that the psychological profile of emotional eaters requires further study rather than relying upon a unidimensional assessment of emotional eating [ 4 ]. Establishing a credible multi-faceted assessment of emotional eaters will aid precision is assessment of intervention outcomes.

There are limitations to the evidence presented. Lack of an appropriate control group, self-selecting selection bias, and potential demand characteristics associated with self-report measures compromise the internal validity of the design. Notwithstanding these limitations, the outcome of this study provides proof of principle as a basis to design a randomized control trial to assess rigorously the effectiveness of the Mbeeat approach as a precursor to a weight-loss intervention.

Furthermore, the outcomes suggest that by examining the wider dimensions of emotional eating in terms of its relation to stress, intuitive eating, inhibitory control and emotion regulation, research may discover if and how change in such factors operates synergistically.

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In: Fox NA ed The development of emotion regulation: biological and behavioural considerations, vols 59, Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, New York, pp 25— For example, research suggests that people working in stressful situations, like hospital emergency departments, have better mental health if they have adequate social support.

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Stress eating, hormones and hunger Stress also seems to affect food preferences. Why do people stress eat? How to relieve stress without overeating When stress affects someone's appetite and waistline, the individual can forestall further weight gain by ridding the refrigerator and cupboards of high-fat, sugary foods.

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I want to get healthier.

Those are tough feelings to navigate on your own. Even a quick phone call to a friend or family member can do wonders for your mood. There are also formal support groups that can help. One self-reported pilot study found that social support and accountability helped the participants better adhere to eating-related behavior change.

Overeaters Anonymous is an organization that addresses overeating from emotional eating, compulsive overeating, and eating disorders. You can explore their website to see if this feels like it would be a good fit for you.

Look for a dietitian with experience supporting people with emotional or disordered eating. They can help you identify eating triggers and find ways to manage them. A mental health professional can help you find other ways to cope with difficult emotions as you move away from using food.

They often use cognitive behavioral therapy CBT. CBT for emotional eating often includes behavioral strategies, such as eating regular meals at a planned time.

Scheduling your meals can help curb physical hunger. The sense of feeling full may also help curb emotional hunger. Some research calls this the cold-hot empathy gap. Whereas in the hot state, you overestimate how hungry you actually are emotional eating. In one study , meal planning was linked with food variety, diet quality, and less obesity.

Instead, consider building a weekly meal plan that includes breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack. Then, decide what time you will eat each meal. For instance:. If you experience an intense desire to eat, think about your next scheduled meal.

It may only be a half hour away. Ask yourself if you can wait to eat. Try not to schedule meals too close to bedtime, and keep all of your meals within a hour window , like a. to p. This means you should eat a meal about every 3 hours. If possible, give food your full attention when you eat.

This can increase the enjoyment you get from the food. When you are distracted, you are also more likely to eat faster. One behavioral strategy mental health professionals use to cope with this conditioning is stimulus control.

Stimulus control works by changing your food cues. Positive self-talk and self-compassion are more tools to use on your journey to managing emotional eating. It has been shown to improve healthful eating. Try to become more aware of the stories you are telling yourself.

It may be helpful to write down some of the repeated negative thoughts you are having. Get curious about where these thoughts might be coming from. Once you are more aware of all the negative thoughts that show up, you can start to work on changing them.

Make notes on how you could change the way you talk to yourself. Consider how you would talk to a dear friend and use that language with yourself. Food may feel like a way to cope but addressing the feelings that trigger hunger is important in the long term. Work to find alternative ways to deal with stress, like exercise and peer support.

Consider mindfulness practices. Change is hard work, but you deserve to feel better. Making changes to your emotional eating can be an opportunity to get more in touch with yourself and your feelings.

Emotional eating can be part of disordered eating. Disordered eating behaviors can lead to developing an eating disorder. If you are feeling uncomfortable with your eating, reach out for support. You can talk with your healthcare professional about your concerns.

You can also connect with a mental health professional or a dietitian to help you address both the physical and mental sides of emotional eating.

Our experts continually monitor the health and wellness space, and we update our articles when new information becomes available.

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Teenage girls and women are not the only ones who deal with eating disorders. Men do, too — in fact, they're on the rise. Anorexia athletica is a type of disordered eating that can affect athletes.

Therapy is a large part of treatment for eating disorders, but there are several different kinds that may work better based on the individual. Learn how to recognize, treat, and cope with bigorexia, and how to remove the stigma around physical appearance that can lead to bigorexia.

Lose the shame, not the weight gain. A Quiz for Teens Are You a Workaholic? How Well Do You Sleep? Health Conditions Discover Plan Connect. Emotional Eating: What You Should Know.

Medically reviewed by Marney A. The consequences of these conditions in terms of lost health, functioning and quality of life are huge — depression and obesity are both related to an elevated risk of developing several chronic diseases and depression is a major contributor to suicide deaths [ 1 , 2 ].

There is thus a critical need to develop interventions that are effective in reducing the occurrence of both conditions. Numerous studies have demonstrated that depression and obesity often occur together and are bi-directionally associated over time [ 3 , 4 ].

In an exploration of possible underlying mechanisms linking depression and obesity, a population-based cross-sectional study showed the link to be mediated by emotional eating [ 5 , 6 ]. Emotional eating refers to a tendency to eat in response to negative emotions e. depression, anxiety, stress with the chosen foods being primarily energy-dense and palatable ones [ 6 , 7 , 8 ].

It can be caused by various mechanisms, such as using eating to cope with negative emotions or confusing internal states of hunger and satiety with physiological changes associated with emotions [ 9 ].

Using the 7-year follow-up data of the same population-based sample, the present study assessed whether emotional eating also acts as a mediator between depression and subsequent weight gain, and whether such a mediation effect is dependent on other factors, including gender, night sleep duration and physical activity.

A more detailed knowledge of these factors may point out novel targets for improved obesity and depression interventions to decrease the global burden of disease and increase individual well-being. Depression depression-melancholia is typically characterized by loss of appetite and subsequent weight loss, but there exists also a depression subtype that is characterized by the a-typical vegetative symptom of increased appetite and weight gain [ 10 , 11 , 12 ].

Emotional eating has been considered a marker of this a-typical depression subtype, because it shares with this depression subtype the a-typical feature of increased appetite in response to distress [ 13 , 14 ].

The depression — obesity link may therefore be mediated by emotional eating, for which there was indeed support in various cross-sectional studies for both genders [ 5 , 6 , 15 , 16 ] and for women [ 17 ]. To date, studies have rarely examined the links between depression, emotional eating and weight gain in a prospective setting.

As an exception, a 5-year study in Dutch parents [ 18 ] and an year study in mid-life US adults [ 19 ] demonstrated that emotional eating acted as a mediator between depression and BMI gain or obesity development particularly in women.

With the evidence from the above studies regarding gender being partly mixed, it remains inconclusive whether the mediation effect of emotional eating varies across women and men.

Gender was therefore one of the moderators tested in the present prospective study. The mediation effect of emotional eating between depression and weight gain may also depend on physical activity and sleep duration, though to our best knowledge their moderating effects in this context have not been directly tested before.

Both factors have been linked to stress and its management, with exercise being a treatment for depression and anxiety disorders [ 20 , 21 , 22 ] and short sleep duration being associated with psychological stress [ 23 , 24 ].

Higher physical activity has also been associated with lower emotional eating [ 25 , 26 ]. Accordingly, it has been proposed that increasing physical activity could be a viable strategy to reduce excessive intake of high-fat and -sugar foods under negative emotional states [ 27 ] and extending sleep duration could have comparable effects [ 28 ].

Exercise could thus attenuate the effects of depression and emotional eating on weight gain via improvements in emotion regulation. In contrast, short sleep duration might strengthen their effects on weight gain — i. reduced sleep can be seen as a stressor itself and a marker of perceived stress [ 29 , 30 ] and evidence is emerging that it interferes with emotion regulation [ 31 ].

In support of this, findings from a laboratory study of 64 women suggested that short sleep duration less than 7 h per night may act as a stressor and lead to elevated snack intake in those prone to emotional eating [ 32 ].

A few observational studies have also found that sleep duration and physical activity moderated the emotional eating — weight gain association.

Van Strien and Koenders [ 29 ] studied a sample of Dutch employees and observed that women with a combination of short sleep duration and high emotional eating experienced the greatest increases in body mass index BMI over 2 years.

A similar pattern of findings was reported by Chaput et al. tendency to overeat in response to food or emotional cues. Moreover, emotional eating was less strongly associated with BMI and its gain in participants with high physical activity than in those with low physical activity in the Dutch employee sample [ 34 ] and in a Swiss population survey [ 26 ].

However, it is important to explore whether these findings can be replicated and extended using an independent sample of adults with long-term follow-up as well as information on symptoms of depression and change in abdominal obesity.

In the present study, we used a large population-based 7-year prospective cohort of adults to increase our knowledge on the interplay between depression, emotional eating and weight changes in the context of gender, night sleep duration and physical activity patterns.

Because of the large age range between 25 and 74 years at baseline in this sample, we were also interested in the possible moderating effects of age. More specifically, our aims were to examine 1 whether emotional eating mediated the associations between symptoms of depression and 7-year change in BMI and waist circumference WC , and 2 whether gender, age, night sleep duration or physical activity moderated these associations.

The baseline phase was conducted in as a part of the FINRISK study in which a random sample of 10, people, stratified by year age groups and gender, was drawn from the Finnish population register in five large study areas [ 36 ]. The baseline phase contained a health examination including measurements on height, weight and WC at a study center and several self-administered questionnaires completed either during the visit or at home.

They also measured their WC themselves, with a measurement tape that was sent to them together with detailed measurement instructions. In addition, written informed consent was obtained from all participants. Weight was measured to the nearest 0. All measurements were made in a standing position in light clothing and without shoes.

WC was measured at a level midway between the lower rib margin and iliac crest. At baseline, weight and height measurements were available for In a recent validation study conducted in a subset of DILGOM participants, the mean differences between self-reported and nurse-measured height, weight and WC were small and the intra-class correlations were 0.

Respondents with measured and self-reported anthropometric data at follow-up were therefore included in this study. The item Center for Epidemiological Studies - Depression CES-D Scale [ 39 ] was used to measure depressive symptoms at baseline.

The scale is designed to measure depressive symptomatology in the general population, and it has been found to be adequately related to clinical ratings of depression [ 40 ].

A meta-analysis of 28 studies examining the structure of the CES-D scale concluded that the proposed four-factor structure negative affect, somatic and retarded activity, lack of positive affect, interpersonal difficulties best described the scale [ 41 ].

In line with this and our previous cross-sectional study [ 5 ], we modelled depression as a latent factor with four indicators where each indicator was the mean of the items belonging to the respective original factor.

We decided to exclude the loss of appetite item from the present analyses, because it represents an unbalanced measurement of appetite change with potentially biasing the measurement towards depression subtype characterized by decreased appetite and weight loss.

Thus, somatic and retarded activity indicator variable was calculated based on 6 items instead of 7 items. Emotional eating at baseline was assessed by using the emotional eating scale of the item Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire TFEQ-R18 [ 42 ].

Karlsson et al. In line with our previous cross-sectional study [ 5 ], emotional eating was modelled as a latent factor with the three items as indicators.

The item was treated as a continuous variable in the analyses. Physical activity at baseline was measured with the International Physical Activity Questionnaire - Short Form IPAQ-SF [ 45 ]. It asks respondents to report their physical activity during the past 7 days across a comprehensive set of domains leisure time, work, transport, domestic work and gardening and three intensity levels vigorous activities, moderate activities and walking.

The data were scored according to the IPAQ manual and a combined total physical activity score minutes per week was used on a continuous scale in the main analyses. We repeated the analyses with vigorous physical activity score minutes per week , but it should be noted that We used structural equation modelling SEM to test the hypothesized mediation models between depression, emotional eating and 7-year change in adiposity indicators.

Depression and emotional eating were modelled as latent factors because ignoring measurement error in predictors can lead to biased regression coefficients and latent variables allow taking measurement error into account [ 46 ]. The analyses were conducted in three steps. Firstly, confirmatory factor analysis with two latent factors depression and emotional eating was used to test whether the four depression indicators and the three emotional eating indicators loaded on separate factors.

Secondly, the hypothesized mediation models with baseline age and gender as covariates were estimated separately for change in BMI and WC — change modelled by regressing the measurement at follow-up on the baseline measurement.

The absence of an interaction between exposure i. depression latent factor and mediator i. The results were reported as the total, direct and indirect effects i.

The reported indirect effect reflects how much of the association between depression and change in adiposity indicator is explained by emotional eating [ 48 ]. The total effect represents the relationship between depression and change in adiposity indicator before adjustment for emotional eating.

Thirdly, the moderator effects of gender, age, night sleep duration and physical activity were examined in a separate set of models by adding a moderator in the case of sleep duration and physical activity and interaction terms moderator × emotional eating, moderator × depression as predictors, and testing the significance of these interactions Mplus code was obtained from Stride et al.

Full Information Maximum Likelihood FIML was used as an estimator, which allows estimation with missing data [ 50 , 51 ]. It does not impute missing values, but estimates parameters directly using all the observed data.

Model fit was evaluated by utilizing Chi-Square statistic, Standardized Root Mean Square Residual SRMR , Tucker-Lewis Index TLI , Comparative Fit Index CFI , and Root Mean Square Error of Approximation RMSEA. Descriptive statistics were derived from IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version Descriptive characteristics of the DILGOM participants at baseline in and follow-up in are displayed in Table 1.

Using the definition of weight maintenance suggested by Stevens et al. Average night sleep duration was 7. The respective percentages for 7 h, 8 h, and 9 h or more were On average, participants spent For vigorous physical activity, the mean and median values were 2.

Results from the confirmatory factor analysis supported the two-factor structure of the depression and emotional eating indicators. Figures 1 and 2 show that the mediation models between depression, emotional eating and 7-year change in BMI or WC fitted the data adequately.

Depression and emotional eating were positively associated with each other and they both predicted higher 7-year increase in BMI and WC. The effects of depression on change in BMI std. These mediation models explained 4.

Depression and emotional eating were modelled as latent factors. Change in BMI was modelled by regressing the measurement at follow-up on the baseline measurement. The model was also adjusted for age and gender not shown in Figure. Change in WC was modelled by regressing the measurement at follow-up on the baseline measurement.

However, while depression and emotional eating predicted higher BMI and WC gain in women, the estimates were non-significant in men. To interpret these interactions, we calculated simple slope tests at different values of the age moderator [ 49 ]: depression predicted higher BMI and WC gain at age 35 years and at age 50 years, but not at age 65 years.

We again calculated simple slope tests at different values of the moderator to interpret these interactions: emotional eating predicted higher BMI and WC gain particularly at 6 h of sleep and at 7 h of sleep, while no such associations were observed at 9 h of sleep. Moreover, emotional eating mediated the effects of depression on change in BMI e.

Total physical activity did not moderate the relationships of depression or emotional eating with change in BMI or WC Table 3.

To our best knowledge, this is the first study to examine the mediation effect of emotional eating between depression and long-term weight changes in the context of gender, age, night sleep duration and physical activity patterns.

There are two main findings: Firstly, we found that eating in response to negative emotions mediated the positive associations between depression and increase in BMI and WC over 7 years — a finding providing support for the hypothesis that emotional eating is one behavioural mechanism between depression and subsequent development of obesity and abdominal obesity.

Secondly, we observed that night sleep duration moderated the associations of emotional eating: individuals with higher emotional eating and shorter sleep duration were particularly vulnerable to BMI and WC gain.

Our results regarding the mediation effect of emotional eating are consistent with two prospective studies conducted in Dutch parents [ 18 ] and mid-life US adults [ 19 ] with self-reported anthropometrics BMI and a composite of BMI and WC, respectively and confirm our cross-sectional results in the baseline data of the DILGOM study [ 5 ].

The present prospective research extends observations from the Dutch and US samples by having also measured information on obesity BMI and abdominal obesity WC indicators, analyzing them as separate outcomes and testing several moderators i.

gender, age, sleep and physical activity simultaneously. In the Dutch and US samples, emotional eating acted as a mediator between depression and risk of developing obesity only in women.

Although gender did not have statistically significant moderator effects in our study, we found a consistent trend resembling this gender difference: the direct and indirect effects of depression and emotional eating on BMI and WC gain were more pronounced in women than in men and significant only in women.

The stronger effects in women are likely to be linked to their higher susceptibility to engage in emotional eating [ 5 , 16 , 26 ] and experience symptoms of depression [ 54 ]. Sex differences in physiological stress response could also bear relevance.

The typical physiological response is hyper-activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and decreased appetite, while adult women often show lower hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and autonomic stress responses than men of same age [ 55 ].

Evidence has further suggested a role for blunted rather than enhanced cortisol response to stress in increased food intake of high emotional eaters [ 56 ], binge eaters [ 57 ] or chronically highly stressed [ 58 ]. In accordance with two earlier studies examining the interplay between emotional eating and sleep duration in the development of obesity, we found that the positive associations of emotional eating with BMI and WC gain were stronger in the short sleepers e.

Emotional eating consequently mediated the link between depression and weight gain primarily in those sleeping fewer hours per night. The fact that a similar moderation effect has now been detected in three independent samples of French Canadian adults [ 33 ], Dutch employees [ 29 ] and Finnish adults builds confidence on the robustness of this observation.

Evidence is also emerging that sleep restriction enhances brain neuronal activation in response to unhealthy food stimuli compared with non-restricted sleep [ 59 ] — suggesting that short sleep duration is a type of stressor that is especially likely to induce increased food intake in emotional eaters.

It is though noteworthy that short sleepers are a heterogeneous group involving at least three types of individuals: those for whom short sleep schedule represents their natural way of functioning, those who reduce their sleep time to meet other demands of daily life, and those who have sleeping difficulties [ 60 ].

Thus, short sleep is likely to be a source of stress or a marker of perceived stress only for the latter two types of people. Yet, as a whole, our findings highlight that individuals with a combination of shorter night sleep duration and higher degree of emotional eating may require tailored approaches in weight management programs.

In contrast to our expectations, we did not find evidence that the level of total physical activity would moderate the relationships between depression, emotional eating and change in BMI and WC.

However, consistent with previous observations [ 25 , 26 ] individuals with higher levels of vigorous and total physical activity scored slightly lower on emotional eating.

Regarding the lack of the moderator effect, it is possible that engaging in activities of vigorous intensity is particularly relevant: some observational studies though not all have reported stronger associations between vigorous physical activity and decreased likelihood of depression as compared to the associations involving moderate activities [ 61 ].

In the study of the Dutch employees, particularly strenuous physical activity running, working out moderated the association of emotional eating with BMI change [ 34 ].

Because of the large age range between 25 and 74 years at baseline in our study, we additionally examined whether the associations varied across age groups. The results suggested that symptoms of depression predicted BMI and WC gain especially in younger participants. Age-related changes in body composition and weight offer one potential explanation for this observation.

For instance, aging is known to lead to decreases in muscle mass [ 62 ]. In the present sample, WC increased more in 25—year-olds than in 65—year-olds and BMI even slightly decreased in 65—year-olds over 7 years. It is therefore possible that such age-related patterns have obscured the effects in older adults.

Individuals may engage in emotional eating to cope with stress and other negative emotions, but in the long-term it is often a maladaptive emotion regulation strategy. Besides that emotional eating may lead to less healthy food intake patterns and subsequent weight gain, it is unlikely to result on long-term improvements in mood — i.

intake of palatable food has shown to improve experimentally induced negative mood state immediately, but the effect tends to be short-term and is easily followed by other negative emotions e.

feelings of guilt especially in dieters [ 63 , 64 ]. Individuals with a high susceptibility to emotional eating might therefore benefit from interventions that teach emotion regulation skills as is done in dialectical behaviour therapy [ 65 ] or that incorporate mindfulness training [ 66 ].

The present findings also imply that future randomized controlled trials could test whether extending sleep is a viable strategy to prevent weight gain and promote healthier food intake in emotional eaters.

Interestingly, a recent pilot study in habitually short sleepers with no information on emotional eating demonstrated that sleep extension was feasible and led to decreased intake of free sugars [ 28 ]. A particular strength of the present study is that it was based on a large population-based sample with 7-year follow-up on both BMI and WC.

The wealth of both measured and self-reported health-related information and the prospective design allowed us to provide novel insights on depression and emotional eating as risk factors for abdominal obesity.

However, certain limitations need to be taken into account while interpreting the results. Firstly, although the sample was initially randomly derived from the Finnish population register, there were non-participants as in all observational studies.

We detected small differences between participants and non-participants at follow-up in terms of baseline age, gender, BMI and WC. Despite that we used FIML to handle missing data, which has shown to produce less biased estimates than conventional techniques, such as listwise deletion [ 50 , 51 ], our observations could still generalize less well to younger men and individuals with higher initial weight.

Secondly, although measured anthropometric data were available for all participants at baseline, two-thirds of the participants self-reported their height, weight and WC at follow-up with measured data available for one-third [ 38 ]. Nonetheless, sensitivity analyses excluding those with self-reported anthropometrics at follow-up supported our findings by producing fairly comparable point estimates.

Thirdly, the widely used CES-D scale and TFEQ-R18 have also some restrictions: the former does not yield information on clinical depression, while the latter contains only three items to measure emotional eating.

Fourthly, night sleep duration and physical activity tested as moderators in this study could alternatively be hypothesized to mediate the depression — obesity link.

The present findings highlight the interplay between depression, emotional eating and short night sleep duration in influencing subsequent development of obesity and abdominal obesity.

Future research should test the clinical significance of our observations by tailoring weight management programs according to these characteristics. World Health Organization.

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Citation: Schnepper R, Georgii C, Eichin K, Arend A-K, Wilhelm FH, Vögele C, Lutz APC, van Dyck Z and Blechert J Fight, Flight, — Or Grab a Bite! Trait Emotional and Restrained Eating Style Predicts Food Cue Responding Under Negative Emotions. Received: 08 April ; Accepted: 14 May ; Published: 03 June Copyright © Schnepper, Georgii, Eichin, Arend, Wilhelm, Vögele, Lutz, van Dyck and Blechert.