An Interventional Study Exploring the Effects of Nutritional Psychoeducation on Emotional Eating After 3 Months
<b>Background/Objectives</b>: Emotional eating may be a consequence of acquired cue reactivity, a lack of control, or an inaccurate link between episodic overeating and negative affect, according to a new analysis of its standard measurement. This study was a controlled trial, which was designed to investigate the effect of personalized nutritional psychoeducation on emotional eating behavior. <b>Methods:</b> This study enrolled 95 participants (62 control group and 33 intervention group) who were randomized to treatment and assessed at 3-month follow-up. Over a period of 3 months, six thematic individual sessions were conducted with a frequency of every 15 days for the participants in the intervention group. The Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire (TFEQ) was used to assess feeding patterns and the manifestation of emotional food consumption in response to emotion. <b>Results:</b> At baseline, it appears that gender is positively related to TFEQ Emotional Score (β: 1.77 (random error: 0.57, <i>p</i>-value: 0.003). BMI (β: -0.11 (random error: 0.04, <i>p</i>-value: 0.003) and waist circumference are negatively related to the TFEQ Emotional Score. <b>Conclusions:</b> Although this study confirmed significant associations of emotional eating and gender, BMI, and waist circumference, the nutritional psychoeducation-based intervention did not exert the expected effects on emotional eating. More high-quality clinical trials need to further be designed to improve emotional eating behavior by applying relevant nutritional psychoeducation-based interventions.
Authors
- Olga Alexatou
- Sousana Κ. Papadopoulou (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6408-6128)
- Georgia-Eirini Deligiannidou (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3976-4473)
- Evmorfia Psara
- Maria Mentzelou
- Constantinos Giaginis (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2878-4831)
- Gavriela Voulgaridou (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0006-3850-058X)
- Aspasia Serdari (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4087-5437)
- Gerasimos Tsourouflis (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9617-6822)
- Konstantinos Papadimitriou (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0059-2873)
Institutions
- Democritus University of Thrace (GR)
- International Hellenic University (GR)
- National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (GR)
- University of the Aegean (GR)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Medical Sciences
- Published
- 2025-08-16
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3390/medsci13030138
- Citations
- 2
- Primary Topic
- Eating Disorders and Behaviors
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 4.61