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.