Reaching for a pint of ice cream after a hard day can certainly be comforting. But when eating in response to bad feelings rather than physical hunger becomes a pattern, it also becomes a problem.

Loneke Blackman Carr, assistant professor of nutritional sciences in the College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources, recently published a study in Eating Behaviors demonstrating the feasibility of a novel approach to weight gain prevention that addresses emotional eating. Blackman Carr conducted this work in collaboration with Rachel Goode, an associate professor in the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

“Emotional eating” can cause weight gain, which can lead to a host of health risks associated with being overweight or obese including cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

“Having that disconnect with physiological hunger can lead to weight gain over time,” Blackman Carr says.

This work fills an important gap in existing research which has largely ignored the role of weight gain prevention in favor of strategies targeting weight loss.

“Weight gain prevention is a really important but critically underutilized approach to addressing weight in this country which, we know, is an outstanding prevention challenge for public health,” Blackman Carr says. “Focusing on this intersection of weight gain plus addressing the emotional eating that so many of us deal with, I think could provide a really unique way to improve physical and mental health in the short and long term.”

Over the course of 12 weeks, 31 participants in the “SATISFY” program engaged in online group sessions with a mental health expert with expertise addressing emotional eating, and clinicians experienced in providing obesity treatment.

One element of the program focused on appetite awareness.

“This particular training is really helpful because it is targeted for individuals who are experiencing disordered or emotional eating to help them reduce eating related to that mental state,” Blackman Carr says. “It can help prevent weight gain and really bring people into greater awareness of what their true hunger is [rather than] responding to more of an emotional or mental health need.”

The other part of the program implemented a proven model focused on healthy lifestyle changes for obesity prevention.

Participants received digital scales and fitness trackers to record their meals and physical activity.

Combining appetite awareness training and obesity prevention was a novel advancement in this study.

The goal of this study was to determine if the intervention was feasible and acceptable to participants and hence, if it could be expanded into a larger study.

The answer was a clear yes.

Participants indicated a moderate to high level of satisfaction with the program. Participants’ emotional eating decreased significantly two months after the intervention. More than half – 63% — of participants also achieved weight stabilization at the two-month follow up.

The next step for this work is to conduct a larger pilot study with a randomized control group.

“We’re looking to compare the intervention that we did with a control group so we can see what’s the magnitude of all the different changes that we can observe,” Blackman Carr says. “With a larger sample and using more of a randomized approach that’s really the gold standard for science, we can start asking the questions of not only can it work but how does it work?”

This research was funded by the Office of Research Development at UNC Chappel Hill.

This work relates to CAHNR’s Strategic Vision area focused on Enhancing Health and Well-Being Locally, Nationally, and Globally.

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