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.