The influenece of Flexible Dietary Restraint on the Loss of Control over Eating: Mediating Effect of Dichotomous Thinking and Rumination (For women in their 20s)

Objectives This research attempts to subdivide controlled eating and binge eating behavior, and investigate the effects of flexible controlled eating on people’s psychological health. One also presents loss of control eating, a sub-variable of binge eating, as the independent variable to provide evidence on effective interventions when it comes to eating disorders. Methods 301 women in their twenties were surveyed online for data collection. SPSS 23.0 was used for descriptive statistics and correlation analysis, while MPLUS 7.4 was used to test structural modeling and mediation effects. Results First, all of the major variables were significantly positively correlated. Second, flexible control predicted loss of control eating both directly and indirectly. Third, dichotomous thinking did not mediate the relationship between flexible control and loss of control eating. Fourth, rumination mediated the relationship between flexible control and loss of control eating. Fifth, dichotomous thinking and rumination mediated the relationship between flexible control and loss of control eating in such order. Conclusions Such results show that high level of flexible control is associated with high level of dichotomous thinking and rumination, leading to increased loss of control eating. This indicates that women with high levels of flexible control can proceed through dichotomous thinking towards eating and rumination, subjecting them towards uncontrolled eating behaviors. One would conclude that control over eating according to external standards such as eating regulations, not internal hunger, may paradoxically lead to loss of control over eating.