- Emotional eating associated with higher education, depression, OCD, and presence of an eating disorder-related condition, strongest link with the latter.
- Restrained eating positively associated with longer obesity duration and negatively associated with presence of an eating disorder-related condition.
- External eating linked to higher education and presence of an eating disorder-related condition; overall eating behaviours vary with psychiatric and sociodemographic factors.
J Eat Disord. 2026 Jul 5. doi: 10.1186/s40337-026-01701-y. Online ahead of print.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Obesity is a multifactorial chronic disease influenced by metabolic, genetic, behavioral, and psychosocial factors. This study aimed to assess eating behaviors in treatment-seeking individuals with obesity using the Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire (DEBQ) and to explore the associations of its emotional, external, and restrained eating subscales with clinical and sociodemographic characteristics.
METHODS: This study included 220 individuals with obesity who were followed at the Etlik City Hospital Obesity Center. Psychiatric diagnoses were assessed using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-5 Disorders (SCID-5). Data were collected through face-to-face interviews using a sociodemographic form and the DEBQ. Regression analyses were conducted as exploratory, hypothesis-generating models to identify variables associated with DEBQ subscale scores, without implying causal relationships.
RESULTS: Emotional eating was positively associated with years of education, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and the presence of an eating disorder-related condition. The strongest association was observed for the presence of an eating disorder-related condition, which may partly reflect conceptual and measurement overlap with the emotional eating construct assessed by the DEBQ. Restrained eating was positively associated with duration of obesity and negatively associated with the presence of an eating disorder-related condition. External eating was positively associated with years of education and the presence of an eating disorder-related condition.
CONCLUSION: Eating behaviors among treatment-seeking individuals with obesity appear heterogeneous and are associated with both psychiatric and sociodemographic factors. In particular, emotional eating was linked to depression, OCD, and the presence of an eating disorder-related condition; however, associations involving eating disorder-related condition should be interpreted cautiously due to potential construct overlap. These findings underscore the importance of assessing psychiatric comorbidities and eating behavior patterns in the individualized management of obesity.
PMID:42402609 | DOI:10.1186/s40337-026-01701-y
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