Background

Emotional eating is reported to amount to at least 60% in overweight or obese individuals. Emotional eating is a eating behaviour disorder that describes the tendency to binge in response to positive or negative emotions. Reactions to these emotional situations vary from person to person. In addition to its independent effect on weight gain, emotional eating is also known to be associated with low weight loss.

Objectives

In this study, we aimed to detect the differences in emotional eating behaviours between dieters and non-dieters and emotional eating behaviours in individuals who diet frequently.

Material and methods

A socio-demographic form consisting of 14 questions and the Dutch Eating Behaviour Scale (DEBQ) consisting of 33 questions were applied to the patients. When the patients who were followed up came for control one month later, the DEBQ scale was repeated.

Results

When emotional eating behaviours, restrictive eating behaviours and external eating behaviours were evaluated between the patient and control groups, a significant relationship was found in both groups (p = 0.000, p = 0.000, p = 0.001). It was observed that the total scores of the DEBQ scale and external eating behaviours were higher in those who followed 3 or more diets (p = 0.001, p = 0.001).

Conclusions

We found that emotional eating behaviours were higher in dieters than in those who did not diet. Emotional eating behaviour was found to be higher in those who diet frequently.