Appetite<\/a>, researchers examined associations between positive and negative emotional eating, food cravings, and recent weight loss, and identified strategies participants found helpful for managing emotional eating.<\/p>\nBackground<\/p>\n
As of 2022, over a billion people around the world were living with obesity, highlighting the global challenge of achieving and maintaining a healthy weight.<\/p>\n
Emotional eating can occur in response to distressing emotions (sadness, anxiety) or positive ones (happiness, excitement). Food cravings may further complicate weight management by making dietary control difficult.<\/p>\n
While weight loss programs promote healthy eating and exercise, sustaining weight loss remains difficult. Understanding psychological barriers and practical coping strategies may help address these difficulties; further research is needed to clarify how emotional eating relates to long-term weight-management outcomes.<\/p>\n
About the study<\/p>\n
The researchers conducted an observational study involving adults enrolled in Slimming World, a community-based commercial weight-management program operating mainly across the United Kingdom and Ireland. Participants received weekly support meetings, weight records, nutritional advice, motivation, and online tools. To participate, people had to be 18 years or older and have been members of the program for 12 to 29 weeks. Individuals older than 80 years or with a body mass index (BMI) below 20 were excluded.<\/p>\n
Participants completed an online survey assessing demographic characteristics, emotional eating, food cravings, and depressive symptoms. The Brief Emotional Eating Scale (BEES) measured eating urges associated with positive and negative emotions, while the Control of Eating Questionnaire (CoEQ) assessed craving control, sweet and savory food cravings, and mood. The Patient Health Questionnaire-8 (PHQ-8) assessed depressive symptoms. The researchers linked survey responses to objectively recorded weight measurements from the preceding 12 weeks.<\/p>\n
Participants were classified into groups based on weight loss: lower weight loss (less than 5%), moderate weight loss (5%\u20139.99%), and higher weight loss (more than 10%). Statistical comparisons and regression analyses examined relationships between weight loss and psychological measures.<\/p>\n
The researchers also used inductive thematic analysis to examine participants\u2019 recommendations for managing emotional eating and the perceived benefits of group support. They mapped the recommended strategies to established behavior-change techniques, and a second researcher independently coded 5% of responses to assess agreement. The University of Leeds granted ethical approval. The study was unfunded; one author disclosed receiving payment for advising Slimming World.<\/p>\n
Study results<\/p>\n
Of the 67,638 eligible Slimming World members invited to participate, 5,818 started the online survey. After excluding incomplete responses and records that did not meet the analysis criteria, 3,834 participants were included. Most participants were female (92%), and the mean age was 57.2 years. Approximately 96% identified as White British. The average BMI was 32.1, and participants experienced a mean reduction of 3.7 BMI units over the preceding 12 weeks.<\/p>\n
The lower, moderate, and higher weight loss groups included 962, 2,156, and 716 participants, respectively. The mean weight reductions were 4.1, 10.4, and 17.1 kilograms. Participants in the higher weight loss group were slightly younger and included a greater proportion of males. Starting weight did not differ significantly between groups.<\/p>\n
Higher weight loss was associated with generally lower emotional eating across all four BEES categories, covering pleasant and unpleasant emotions with high and low activation (for example, excitement or nervousness versus feeling pleased or sad). Participants who lost more weight reported weaker urges to eat in response to both positive and negative emotions.<\/p>\n
For unpleasant, low-activation emotions, the moderate and higher weight loss groups did not differ significantly. The higher weight loss group also reported fewer difficulties controlling food cravings and lower cravings for sweet and savory foods. These differences were statistically significant across the groups.<\/p>\n
Positive mood scores were highest and depressive symptom scores lowest in the higher weight loss group. The lower weight loss group showed the opposite pattern.<\/p>\n
Regression analyses considering age, gender, socioeconomic deprivation, and weight-loss medication use supported these findings. Negative emotional eating was generally more common than positive emotional eating.<\/p>\n
Older participants generally reported lower emotional eating and fewer cravings, while poorer mood was associated with greater deprivation. Correlation analyses also linked emotional eating with food cravings and associated better mood with lower emotional eating. Approximately 66% of participants provided recommendations for managing emotional eating. The percentages for both sets of open-ended responses refer to the full sample, and individual responses could include multiple themes.<\/p>\n
Distraction was the most frequently identified strategy (31.7%), including hobbies, social interaction, and physical activity. 24.2% of participants mentioned keeping healthier foods available and substituting healthier alternatives.<\/p>\n
Planning meals, establishing routines, and preparing food in advance represented 21.9%. Mindset and motivation, including positive affirmations and self-compassion, accounted for 17.9%, while moderation and flexibility represented 15.2%.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Other suggestions included recognizing emotional triggers, practicing mindful eating, drinking water, and seeking professional or social support.<\/p>\n
Participants highlighted the importance of group support, with 38.3% identifying belonging, encouragement, camaraderie, and feeling understood as helpful.<\/p>\n
Sharing experiences and learning coping strategies from others accounted for 23.5%. Some participants valued approachable program consultants and regular weigh-ins that encouraged accountability.<\/p>\n
About 11% of the respondents described aspects of group support as unhelpful or reported no benefit. Those with higher weight loss more often recommended physical activity as a distraction, healthier food swaps, and positive affirmations, and were more likely to describe regular weigh-ins as helpful for personal accountability. The researchers did not test these reported strategies as causes of weight loss.<\/p>\n
Conclusions<\/p>\n
The findings indicate that greater recent weight loss was associated with lower positive and negative emotional eating, fewer food cravings, and better mood. Participants reported distraction, healthy food alternatives, meal planning, positive thinking, flexibility, and social support as methods for tackling emotional eating.<\/p>\n
Group support was perceived as helpful in creating a sense of belonging, sustaining motivation, learning from others, and reinforcing personal accountability. Weight loss programs may benefit from addressing emotional eating alongside healthy nutrition and physical activity.<\/p>\n
The study could not determine whether emotional eating influenced weight loss or vice versa because psychological measures were collected once. Only 5.7% of invited members were included in the final analysis, raising the possibility of selection bias and limiting generalizability. Respondents had greater average weight loss than the broader Slimming World population, suggesting that more successful members may have been overrepresented.<\/p>\n
Source:<\/p>\n
Journal reference:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A survey of Slimming World members explores how emotions, cravings, and everyday coping strategies relate to recent weight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":657190,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[530,86612,1372,453,163,85,46,3477,6423,1360,591,2985],"class_list":["post-657189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-anxiety","tag-appetite","tag-exercise","tag-food","tag-health","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-obesity","tag-physical-activity","tag-research","tag-weight-loss","tag-weight-management"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/657190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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