Anxiety and Restrained Eating in Everyday Life: An ecological momentary assessment study
Dublin Core
Title
Anxiety and Restrained Eating in Everyday Life: An ecological momentary assessment study
Subject
Clinical psychology
Creator
Kristen Walker
Electronic Resource Item Type Metadata
Journal Name
Journal of Affective Disorders
Volume
Vol. 362
Issue
No. 1
Publication Date
2024
Publisher
Elsevier ScienceDirect
Document Type
Journal article
Language
English
Access
Open Access
View Source
Abstract
Background: Restrained eating has been related to psychological distress like anxiety and eating disorder symptomatology, but little is known about this relationship in daily life in non-clinical populations. We aimed to understand concurrent and temporal associations between momentary anxiety and restrained eating in everyday life within and across persons in a non-clinical sample, and examined whether this association remains after controlling for eating disorder symptomatology.
Methods: We used a 10-day ecological momentary assessment (EMA) protocol. Participants (n = 123) completed a baseline survey with demographics and eating disorder symptomatology questions, and three EMA surveys per day reporting anxiety and restrained eating intentions. We applied mixed-effects and random intercept cross-lagged models to analyze the data.
Results: Momentary anxiety and restrained eating were concurrently significantly positively associated within and between persons. When participants had more anxiety than was typical for them, they were more likely to intend to restrain eating, and people with overall higher anxiety symptoms tended to report greater restrained eating over the study period. These associations remained significant after adjusting for eating disorder symptomatology. There were no significant temporal cross-lagged effects. Anxiety-restrained eating association did not spill over into the next assessment window.
Limitations: The time window between prompts may have been too long to capture potential temporal effects, and we did not examine actual behavioral food restrictions.
Conclusion: Daily-life anxiety may be related to concurrent restrained eating intentions, above and beyond baseline eating disorder symptomatology. Research is needed exploring daily-life anxiety as a potential intervention target to address restrained eating.
Methods: We used a 10-day ecological momentary assessment (EMA) protocol. Participants (n = 123) completed a baseline survey with demographics and eating disorder symptomatology questions, and three EMA surveys per day reporting anxiety and restrained eating intentions. We applied mixed-effects and random intercept cross-lagged models to analyze the data.
Results: Momentary anxiety and restrained eating were concurrently significantly positively associated within and between persons. When participants had more anxiety than was typical for them, they were more likely to intend to restrain eating, and people with overall higher anxiety symptoms tended to report greater restrained eating over the study period. These associations remained significant after adjusting for eating disorder symptomatology. There were no significant temporal cross-lagged effects. Anxiety-restrained eating association did not spill over into the next assessment window.
Limitations: The time window between prompts may have been too long to capture potential temporal effects, and we did not examine actual behavioral food restrictions.
Conclusion: Daily-life anxiety may be related to concurrent restrained eating intentions, above and beyond baseline eating disorder symptomatology. Research is needed exploring daily-life anxiety as a potential intervention target to address restrained eating.
Citation
Kristen Walker, “Anxiety and Restrained Eating in Everyday Life: An ecological momentary assessment study,” ICMGLT Digital Library, accessed June 12, 2026, https://icmglt.org/library/items/show/492.