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.

Keywords:

• Body satisfaction
• emotional eating
• mood
• obesity
• self-efficacy

Acknowledgment

Acknowledgement is given to the instructors and participants within this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research received no specific funding support from any public or private agency.