An Interventional Study Exploring the Effects of Nutritional Psychoeducation on Emotional Eating After 3 Months

Abstract

Background/Objectives: Emotional eating may be a consequence of acquired cue reactivity, a lack of control, or an inaccurate link between episodic overeating and negative affect, according to a new analysis of its standard measurement. This study was a controlled trial, which was designed to investigate the effect of personalized nutritional psychoeducation on emotional eating behavior. Methods: This study enrolled 95 participants (62 control group and 33 intervention group) who were randomized to treatment and assessed at 3-month follow-up. Over a period of 3 months, six thematic individual sessions were conducted with a frequency of every 15 days for the participants in the intervention group. The Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire (TFEQ) was used to assess feeding patterns and the manifestation of emotional food consumption in response to emotion. Results: At baseline, it appears that gender is positively related to TFEQ Emotional Score (β: 1.77 (random error: 0.57, p-value: 0.003). BMI (β: -0.11 (random error: 0.04, p-value: 0.003) and waist circumference are negatively related to the TFEQ Emotional Score. Conclusions: Although this study confirmed significant associations of emotional eating and gender, BMI, and waist circumference, the nutritional psychoeducation-based intervention did not exert the expected effects on emotional eating. More high-quality clinical trials need to further be designed to improve emotional eating behavior by applying relevant nutritional psychoeducation-based interventions.

Keywords: BMI; clinical trial; emotional eating; intervention; motivation; nutritional psychoeducation.