Bailey Natalie, Waller Glenn
Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, UK.
Int J Eat Disord. 2017 Jun;50(6):693-697. doi: 10.1002/eat.22676. Epub 2017 Jan 20.
Body checking is used widely among clinical and non-clinical individuals. It is suggested to be a safety behavior, reducing anxiety initially but potentially enhancing eating and shape concerns in the longer term. However, there is little causal evidence of those negative effects. This experimental study tests the potential negative impact of body checking. Fifty non-clinical women took part in a study of the effects of body checking in naturalistic settings. Each checked their wrist size every 15 minutes for eight hours on one day, then did not check the next day (order randomized). The impact on eating cognitions and body dissatisfaction was measured at the end of each day, and levels of change in those characteristics were also associated with eating pathology levels. Body checking did not result in more negative general eating attitudes or body dissatisfaction, but did result in a significant increase in a specific cognition that is hypothesised to be relevant to eating pathology - the fear of uncontrollable weight gain following eating. This impact was greater among those women with more negative existing eating attitudes. These findings add to the small experimental evidence base, demonstrating negative causal links between body checking and eating pathology. The findings need to be extended to clinical groups, but support the use of existing cognitive-behavioral methods to reduce body checking behavior.
身体检查在临床和非临床人群中被广泛使用。它被认为是一种安全行为，最初可减轻焦虑，但从长远来看可能会加剧对饮食和体型的关注。然而，几乎没有因果证据证明这些负面影响。这项实验研究测试了身体检查的潜在负面影响。五十名非临床女性参与了一项关于自然环境中身体检查影响的研究。她们在一天中的八小时内每隔15分钟检查一次手腕尺寸，然后第二天不进行检查（顺序随机）。每天结束时测量对饮食认知和身体不满的影响，这些特征的变化水平也与饮食病理水平相关。身体检查并没有导致更消极的总体饮食态度或身体不满，但确实导致了一种特定认知的显著增加，这种认知被假设与饮食病理有关——即对进食后体重不可控制增加的恐惧。在那些已有更消极饮食态度的女性中，这种影响更大。这些发现增加了少量的实验证据基础，证明了身体检查与饮食病理之间的负面因果联系。这些发现需要扩展到临床群体，但支持使用现有的认知行为方法来减少身体检查行为。
