The Department of Community Mental Health, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel.
Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, United Kingdom.
J Affect Disord. 2024 Oct 1;362:543-551. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2024.07.065. Epub 2024 Jul 15.
Restrained eating has been related to psychological distress like anxiety and eating disorder symptomatology, but little is known about this relationship in daily life in non-clinical populations. We aimed to understand concurrent and temporal associations between momentary anxiety and restrained eating in everyday life within and across persons in a non-clinical sample, and examined whether this association remains after controlling for eating disorder symptomatology.
We used a 10-day ecological momentary assessment (EMA) protocol. Participants (n = 123) completed a baseline survey with demographics and eating disorder symptomatology questions, and three EMA surveys per day reporting anxiety and restrained eating intentions. We applied mixed-effects and random intercept cross-lagged models to analyze the data.
Momentary anxiety and restrained eating were concurrently significantly positively associated within and between persons. When participants had more anxiety than was typical for them, they were more likely to intend to restrain eating, and people with overall higher anxiety symptoms tended to report greater restrained eating over the study period. These associations remained significant after adjusting for eating disorder symptomatology. There were no significant temporal cross-lagged effects. Anxiety-restrained eating association did not spill over into the next assessment window.
The time window between prompts may have been too long to capture potential temporal effects, and we did not examine actual behavioral food restrictions.
Daily-life anxiety may be related to concurrent restrained eating intentions, above and beyond baseline eating disorder symptomatology. Research is needed exploring daily-life anxiety as a potential intervention target to address restrained eating.
限制进食与焦虑等心理困扰和饮食障碍症状有关，但在非临床人群的日常生活中，人们对这种关系知之甚少。我们旨在了解非临床样本中个体内部和个体之间的瞬时焦虑与日常限制进食之间的并发和时间关联，并检验在控制饮食障碍症状后，这种关联是否仍然存在。
我们使用了 10 天的生态瞬时评估（EMA）方案。参与者（n=123）完成了基线调查，包括人口统计学和饮食障碍症状问题的调查，以及每天进行三次 EMA 调查，报告焦虑和限制进食的意图。我们应用混合效应和随机截距交叉滞后模型来分析数据。
个体内部和个体之间的瞬时焦虑和限制进食呈显著正相关。当参与者的焦虑程度超过他们的典型水平时，他们更有可能打算限制进食，而整体焦虑症状较高的人在研究期间更有可能报告限制进食较多。在调整饮食障碍症状后，这些关联仍然显著。没有显著的时间交叉滞后效应。焦虑与限制进食的关联不会溢出到下一个评估窗口。
提示之间的时间窗口可能太长，无法捕捉潜在的时间效应，并且我们没有检查实际的行为性食物限制。
日常生活中的焦虑可能与当前的限制进食意图有关，超出了基线饮食障碍症状的范围。需要研究将日常生活中的焦虑作为解决限制进食的潜在干预目标。
