Predicting Changes in Negative Emotional Eating following Bariatric Weight-Loss Surgery

Background: Obesity has been associated with higher rates of social anxiety, and social anxiety has been linked to increased emotional eating. We hypothesized that reductions in BMI and social anxiety following bariatric surgery would predict decreases in negative emotional eating. Methods: Participants were 206 bariatric weight loss surgery patients who completed self-report questionnaires. Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS) scores measured social anxiety. Scores from the negative emotion subscale in the Emotional Appetite Questionnaire (EMAQ) reflected eating due to negative emotions. BMI was calculated from self-report data. All data were collected shortly preceding surgery and at 1-year post surgery. Results: Multiple regression was performed to examine whether changes in BMI and social anxiety predicted changes in negative emotional eating. BMI, social anxiety scores and negative emotional eating decreased significantly 1-year post surgery. Changes in BMI did not significantly predict changes in negative emotional eating. Decreases in social anxiety, however, did predict decreases in negative emotional eating following bariatric surgery, even when controlling for changes in BMI, p = .001. Conclusions: These research findings suggest that there may be behavioral benefits to bariatric surgery when psychosocial improvements occur, independent of weight loss. It would be worthwhile to test whether targeting social anxiety helps reduce negative emotional eating in obese participants

Obesity and addiction: can a complication of surgery help us understand the connection?

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/137403/1/obr12542_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/137403/2/obr12542.pd

Cloaked websites: propaganda, cyber-racism and epistemology in the digital era

This article analyzes cloaked websites, which are sites published by individuals or groups who conceal authorship in order to disguise deliberately a hidden political agenda. Drawing on the insights of critical theory and the Frankfurt School, this article examines the way in which cloaked websites conceal a variety of political agendas from a range of perspectives. Of particular interest here are cloaked white supremacist sites that disguise cyber-racism. The use of cloaked websites to further political ends raises important questions about knowledge production and epistemology in the digital era. These cloaked sites emerge within a social and political context in which it is increasingly difficult to parse fact from propaganda, and this is a particularly pernicious feature when it comes to the cyber-racism of cloaked white supremacist sites. The article concludes by calling for the importance of critical, situated political thinking in the evaluation of cloaked websites