Alexithymia and Eating Behaviour
While alexithymia is a problem in describing and expressing emotions,
emotional eating refers to a problematic response to emotions. There is
a weak and positive association between alexithymia andemotional eating
which is a predictor of obesity/overweight according to our study. This
result confirms our hypothesis which claim that alexithymia and
emotional eating are related conditions. Adolescents who are more
alexithymic may be more prone to cope with emotions by acting-outs such
as overeating. According to our study and previous reports based on
general adolescent population (5)(6), alexithymia can be considered a
managable risk factor for disruptive eating behaviour and excess weight.
Moreover investigation of effect of recognizing and expressing emotions
on disordered eating and BMI in further studies, may be a guide in
obesity/overweight management. In other words, excess weight and
disruptive eating behaviours can be considered as physical and action
based expressions of emotional properties and problems. Additionally,
similar to the coping mechanism based on overeating, obese adolescents
may have other maladaptive mechanisms for coping with emotions. This
topic may be a future research direction in this area.