title: Emotional eating moderates the relationship of night eating with binge eating and body mass.
abstract: Night eating syndrome is marked by substantial evening or nocturnal food intake, insomnia, morning anorexia, and depressed mood. Night eating severity has been positively associated with body mass index (BMI), binge eating frequency, and emotional eating tendencies. We conducted an online questionnaire study among students (N=729) and explored possible interactive effects between those variables. Night eating severity, binge eating frequency, BMI and emotional eating were all positively correlated with each other. Regression analyses showed that night eating severity was particularly related to more frequent binge episodes and higher BMI at high levels of emotional eating but unrelated to those variables at low levels of emotional eating. Thus, eating as a means of emotion regulation appears to be an important moderator of the relationship between night eating and both binge eating and BMI.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology I, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Adrian
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Meule
authors.forename: Kelly C
authors.initials: KC
authors.lastname: Allison
authors.forename: Petra
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Platte
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D056912:Binge-Eating Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D001823:Body Composition; D015992:Body Mass Index; D002940:Circadian Rhythm; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003863:Depression / Q000523:psychology; D004435:Eating / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005247:Feeding Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012044:Regression Analysis; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: binge eating; body mass index; emotional eating; night eating