Emotional eating within a clinical and community population
Introduction: Emotional eating literature has focused on those with a clinical diagnosis around eating difficulties, exploring emotional eating in response to ‘negative’ emotions. Limited studies investigate the prevalence of emotional eating within community samples, and evidence appears inconclusive as to the underlying reasons why individuals emotionally eat. Aim: This research explores emotional eating within clinical and community samples. A clinically obese binge eating disordered population in study one, and a community sample during the coronavirus pandemic in study two. The aims were to explore experiences of emotional eating, comparing and contrasting across the two populations and in doing so, provide recommendations for therapeutic interventions. Method: In Study one, in-person focus groups and telephone individual interviews were conducted with a clinically obese binge eating disordered population (focus groups n = 8 female, n = 2 male; individual interviews n = 5 female) recruited via two national health service weight management centres. In study two, semi-structured online interviews using Microsoft Teams were carried out with eight participants (male n = 5; female n = 3) recruited following engagement with a previous emotional eating based study (see Ruiz et al., 2023), and via an opportunity and snowball sampling to explore emotional eating during the COVID-19 pandemic. Reflexive thematic analysis was employed as the approach to understand the experiences of participants whilst allowing for the researcher to engage in reflection throughout analysis. Findings: For the clinical population four main themes were generated: ‘An awareness of eating in response to emotions’ which reflects an initial lack of awareness of eating in response to emotions with a growing awareness and moment of insight into this phenomenon. ‘Emotions eliciting emotional eating’ reflects the participants experiences of individual emotions eliciting an eating response. ‘Factors perceived as influencing eating behaviours’ reflects factors that influence eating behaviours such as environmental influences. ‘Recommendations for interventions’ reflects the need for interventions that identifies emotional eating and binge eating disorder. Within the community population four main themes were generated those were ‘The impact of the coronavirus pandemic’ highlighting the changes and effect of the pandemic on participants. ‘The influence of emotions on eating behaviours’ reflects the emotional antecedents of subsequent eating behaviours. ‘The function of eating beyond reaching satiety’ reflects the participants use of eating including emotional regulation and ‘the emotional eating cycle’. Conclusions: Emotional eating was present in both clinical and community populations. For the clinical population emotional eating occurred predominantly in response to unpleasant emotions and was used to manage emotions. Emotional eating in response to unpleasant emotions occurred in the community population but to a lesser extent. The community population were able to draw on a wider range of coping mechanisms including emotional eating. Pleasant emotional states appeared to align with eating healthier foods and wellbeing. Implications for clinical practice: At a community level exploration of emotions and eating behaviours could help avoid the development of clinical difficulties. Eating could be used in a conscious way to regulate emotions, and through being mindful of such uses, it can form part of a well-developed repertoire of emotional regulation strategies. When eating becomes a dominant emotion regulatory mechanism clinical difficulties and unwanted outcomes such as weight gain can occur.
emotional eating, thematic analysis, emotional regulation, binge eating disorder, coronavirus
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