Synapse
⌘+K
Synapse
PulseExploreClubsResearchersJournals
Instagram
HomeClubsExplore
September 5, 2026BMC PsychologyOpen Access

Associations of cognitive beliefs and metacognitive processes with eating behavior in adults with obesity and healthy-weight controls: a cross-sectional study

View Full Paper
Ask AI
Bookmark
Share

Authors

SKSeda KayıkcıAGAhmet GülBKBüşra Söylemez Karakuş

Discussion

Loading...

Member takes

Overview

Cross-sectional study reveals metacognitive beliefs link directly to emotional eating in adults with obesity, suggesting unique cognitive targets for addressing maladaptive eating habits.

Key Points

  • To determine whether metacognitive beliefs and automatic thoughts are associated with maladaptive eating behaviors in adults with obesity compared to healthy-weight controls after accounting for affective symptoms.
  • Conducted a cross-sectional study comparing 67 adults with obesity (BMI ≥ 30 kg/m²) from a psychiatric outpatient clinic with 70 healthy-weight controls (BMI ≤ 25 kg/m²), excluding active DSM-5 psychiatric disorders.
  • Assessed eating behavior (TFEQ-21), automatic thoughts (ATQ), metacognitions (MCQ-30), and affective symptoms (DASS-21).
  • Performed exploratory multi-group path analysis adjusted for age, sex, and education, evaluating indirect associations using 5,000 bootstrap resamples.
  • Participants with obesity exhibited significantly higher emotional eating (d = 1.05), uncontrolled eating (d = 1.10), automatic thoughts (d = 0.58), and metacognitive beliefs (d = 0.55) than controls, whereas cognitive restraint showed no difference (d = −0.07).
  • Metacognitive beliefs were directly associated with emotional eating in the obesity group independent of emotional symptoms (β = 0.46, p = .006), but not in the healthy-weight control group (β = −0.06, p = .688).
  • In healthy-weight controls, automatic thoughts were indirectly linked to uncontrolled eating through anxiety symptoms.

Cite This Study

Kayıkcı et al. (2026) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/6a9bd3c76b95aff0620eaf00https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-026-05148-3
View Full Paper
Ask AI
Bookmark
Share

Also Consider

Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context:

  1. 1Worry, Rumination, and Metacognitive Beliefs in Adolescents with Obesity Associated with Binge Eating Disorder (BED) vs. Age-Matched Adolescents with Essential Obesity: A Cross-Sectional Study2026 · 1 citations
  2. 2Investigation of the Effect of Emotional Eating Habits on Obesity2025
  3. 3Understanding eating behaviors in obesity: a DEBQ-based analysis of clinical and demographic factors2026
  4. 4The link between depression, eating behaviors and body mass index2025
  5. 5Multiple mediation of the association between childhood emotional abuse and adult obesity by anxiety and bulimia – a sample from bariatric surgery candidates and healthy controls2024 · 4 citations