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Review
. 2018 Apr 25;18(6):35.
doi: 10.1007/s11892-018-1000-x.

Causes of Emotional Eating and Matched Treatment of Obesity

Tatjana van Strien  1   2
Affiliations
Review

Causes of Emotional Eating and Matched Treatment of Obesity

Tatjana van Strien. Curr Diab Rep. .

Abstract

Purpose of the review: Eating in response to negative emotions (EE) may be an explanatory factor of the weight regain of many dieters. This narrative review presents evidence on possible causes of EE and the association of EE with depression and obesity and discusses implications of these findings for the treatment of obesity.

Recent findings: Possible causes of EE are high dietary restraint, poor interoceptive awareness, alexithymia, emotion dysregulation and a reversed hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) stress axis. EE may be the outcome of inadequate parenting or depressive feelings in interaction with genetic susceptibility. There is also robust evidence that EE is a mediator between depression and obesity. The association of EE with depression and poor emotion regulation skills suggests that the treatment of obese people with high EE should not focus on calorie-restricted diets but on emotion regulation skills. The DEBQ (Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire) enables such a matched treatment of obesity.

Keywords: Causes; DEBQ; Depression; Emotional eating; Matched treatment; Obesity.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of Interest

Tatjana van Strien receives royalties for the DEBQ and its manual.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

This article contains studies/experiments with human subjects performed by the author. All reported studies/experiments have been previously published and complied with all applicable ethical standards (including the Helsinki declaration and its amendments, institutional/national research committee standards, and international/national/institutional guidelines).

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