Association Between Anxiety Level, Eating Behavior, and Nutritional Status in Adult Women

Abstract

Objective: During menopause there appear hormonal changes that have an impact on physiological aspects, such as weight gain, and psychological ones, such as the presence of anxiety, which could affect eating behavior. The study objective is to assess the association between anxiety level and eating behavior as well nutritional status in adult woman.Materials and methods: A descriptive, observational, cross-sectional study was conducted on women (aged 40-65 years). A sociodemographic and lifestyle survey was performed. Anxiety was determined by the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and eating behavior (EB) through the Three Factor Food Questionnaire (TEFQ-R18). Nutritional status was measured considering body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC). Statistical analysis was performed through SPSS 19.0.Results: One hundred twenty-eight women were included, 20.3% at the premenopausal stage and 79.7% at the postmenopausal stage. No association was found between biological stage and nutritional status (p = 0.61) or WC (p = 0.57). State anxiety was experienced by 26.6% of the women and trait anxiety by 53.9% of them; there were no significant differences according to biological stage or nutritional status. The median values of emotional eating (EE), uncontrolled eating (UE), and cognitive restraint eating (CRE) were 5.0 (4.0-7.0), 16.0 (13.0-21.0) and 14.0 (10.0-17.0), respectively, being higher in premenopausal women, whereas there were no significant differences on biological stage. Clinically detectable state anxiety was associated with EE (p = 0.035), UE (p = 0.002), and CRE (p = 0.004), and trait anxiety only with UE (p = 0.016) and EE (p = 0.001). However, anxiety and nutritional status were not related.Conclusions: Anxiety was associated to eating behavior, although it was not related to nutritional status.

Keywords: Menopause; anxiety; eating behavior; lifestyle; nutritional status.