A double burden: emotional eating and lack of cognitive reappraisal in eating disordered women.

OBJECTIVE

To examine the influence of emotional eating and lack of cognitive reappraisal on eating pathology in women with binge-purge and restricting type eating disorders.

METHOD: Women with a diagnosis of anorexia or bulimia nervosa according to the DSM-IV-tr (n = 50) and non-clinical women without eating disorders (n = 52) were asked about emotional eating tendencies, adaptive emotion regulation strategies (cognitive reappraisal) and eating pathology symptoms.

RESULTS

In binge-purging women, emotional eating with limited use of cognitive reappraisal predicted level of eating pathology but not in the restricting and non-clinical women.

DISCUSSION: Emotional eating tendencies in combination with a low tendency to use cognitive reappraisal may influence the severity of eating pathology in individuals with binge-purge behaviours. Evidently, patients with these characteristics require a therapy that addresses adaptive emotion regulation skills.