Emotion regulation styles as longitudinal predictors of compulsive exercise: a twelve month prospective study

Exercise can be used as a mood regulator but, in the eating disorder literature, exercise has sometimes been found to be compulsive, detrimental to physical health, and regarded as one maladaptive strategy used to regulate emotions. This study examined longitudinal associations between emotion regulation styles and this compulsive exercise in 572 adolescents who completed measures of compulsive exercise and emotion regulation. Twelve months later they completed measures of compulsive exercise. Compulsive exercise was predicted by Internal Dysfunctional emotion regulation in girls and boys, even after controlling for initial levels of compulsive exercise. Adolescents displaying compulsivity to exercise may require intervention programmes to alter their emotion regulation strategies

Sociocultural risk factors for compulsive exercise: a prospective study of adolescents

The risk factors for compulsive exercise are unknown. This study aims to explore longitudinal sociocultural risk factors for compulsive exercise, using a 12-month prospective design. A sample of 332 male and female adolescents (aged 13–15 years at baseline) completed self-report measures of sociocultural risk factors and compulsive exercise at baseline and eating disorder psychopathology and compulsive exercise at 12-month follow-up assessment. Hierarchical regressions found that family and peer messages to become more muscular predicted compulsive exercise in boys, whereas feeling pressure from the media to be thin was a significant predictor of compulsive exercise in girls. These relationships remained significant when controlling for eating disorder psychopathology but became nonsignificant when initial levels of compulsive exercise were entered into the model. The findings suggest that sociocultural risk factors may contribute to the development of compulsive exercise but future research should utilise a younger sample and employ a longer follow-up period to identify true longitudinal effects. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association

Adolescents' level of eating psychopathology is related to perceptions of their parents' current feeding practices

Purpose: This study aimed to examine the relationships between adolescents' eating disorder attitudes and their perceptions of the feeding practices that their parents/caregivers currently use. Methods: Boys and girls (N = 528) aged 13-15 completed self-report measures of their levels of eating psychopathology and their parents' current feeding practices and reported their own height and weight. Results: For girls, greater perceived pressure from parents to eat food and lower perceived parental responsibility for food were significantly related to more unhealthy eating-related attitudes. Similar to girls, lower perceived parental responsibility for food was significantly related to greater levels of eating psychopathology in boys. Greater perceived parental restriction of foods was also significantly related to greater eating psychopathology in boys. Conclusions: These results suggest that adolescents' perceptions of their parents' use of more controlling feeding practices are related to greater prevalence of unhealthy eating-related attitudes. Such findings have potentially important implications for the prevention of disordered eating in adolescents

Psychological risk factors for compulsive exercise: a longitudinal investigation of adolescent boys and girls

Compulsive exercise is associated with unhealthy outcomes and is common among eating disorder populations. This study aimed to replicate previous cross-sectional work by considering psychological characteristics as longitudinal predictors of compulsive exercise. A sample of 369 adolescents (n= 221 female, n= 148 male) completed measures of compulsive exercise, eating disorder psychopathology, obsessive-compulsiveness, perfectionism, anxiety, and depression at baseline, and a measure of compulsive exercise two. years later. For boys, greater obsessive-compulsiveness and self-oriented perfectionism predicted compulsive exercise, whilst among girls only baseline compulsive exercise was a significant predictor. Compulsive exercise prevention work among boys may benefit from targeting their levels of obsessive-compulsiveness and self-perfectionism. For girls, further risk factor research into compulsive exercise is required. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd

Disordered eating, compulsive exercise and sport participation in a UK adolescent sample

The sport literature has produced equivocal results as to whether sport participation is a protective or risk factor for disordered eating. One mechanism by which it could be a risk factor is the increased drive or compulsion to exercise. This study compared the levels of disordered eating and compulsive exercise between adolescent sport and non-sport participants. A sample of 417 male and female adolescents, aged 14-16 years old, was recruited from UK secondary schools. Participants completed questionnaire packs that included the Eating Disorder Inventory (EDI), a measure of exercise behaviour, and the Compulsive Exercise Test (CET). Non-sport participants reported significantly greater body dissatisfaction than sport participants, and this was true for boys and girls. Significant group differences were also reported for many of the CET scales, with sport participants generally reporting greater levels of compulsive exercise than non-sport participants. Implications of these results are discussed

The relationship between compulsive exercise and emotion regulation in adolescents

Objective. Compulsive exercise is suggested to be a strategy to regulate emotions. This suggestion has never been studied in adolescents. Therefore, this study examined the cross-sectional association between emotion regulation and compulsive exercise attitudes in adolescents. Design. A cross-sectional design was employed for this study. Method. A sample of 1,630 adolescent boys and girls completed self-report measures of compulsive exercise, emotion regulation, and disordered eating attitudes, as part of ongoing research into exercise and eating attitudes in adolescents. Results. Compulsive exercise was significantly associated with emotion regulation, after controlling for disordered eating attitudes. Among boys, compulsive exercise was associated with internal functional, internal dysfunctional, and external functional emotion regulation strategies. In girls, internal functional and internal dysfunctional emotion regulation strategies predicted compulsive exercise. Conclusions. Adolescents’ compulsivity towards exercise is positively associated with different emotion regulation strategies. More work is needed to identify whether emotion regulation strategies longitudinally predict compulsive exercise

Eating disorder examination questionnaire: factor structure for adolescent girls and boys

Objective To examine the factor structure of the EDE-Q among a sample of adolescents. Method A community-based sample of 917 adolescents (522 girls and 395 boys) aged 14-18 years completed the EDE-Q version 6.0 as part of a larger study. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two subsamples to enable separate analyses. Results A confirmatory factor analysis on the original four factor model of the EDE-Q produced an inadmissible model with a poor fit. Exploratory factor analysis using principal axis factoring produced an alternative three factor model of the EDE-Q among adolescents. The Shape and Weight Concerns, Restriction and Preoccupation and Eating Concern subscales accounted for 65% of the total variance. Subscale and global scores were significantly higher for girls than for boys. A high proportion of both girls (53.6%) and boys (30.5%) reported participating in at least one key eating disordered behaviour during the previous 28 days. Discussion The results of this study present three new subscales (Shape and Weight Concerns, Restriction and Preoccupation and Eating Concern) which are suggested for use in future research which uses the EDE-Q with community samples of adolescents. Copyright © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc

Compulsive exercise: the role of personality, psychological morbidity, and disordered eating

Abstract Objective: Compulsive exercise has been closely linked with eating disorders, and has been widely reported in both clinical and nonclinical settings. It has been shown to have a negative impact on eating disorder treatment and outcome. However, the risk factors for compulsive exercise have not been examined. This study aimed to provide a first step in identifying potential cross-sectional predictors of compulsive exercise. Method: The sample consisted of 1,488 male and female adolescents, aged 12–14 years old, recruited from schools in the United Kingdom. Participants completed measures of compulsive exercise, personality, psychological morbidity, and disordered eating attitudes during a school class period. Results: Multiple stepwise regressions showed that the strongest cross-sectional predictors of compulsive exercise were a drive for thinness, perfectionism, and obsessive-compulsiveness. Discussion: These results are discussed in terms of the role that personal factors may play in the development of compulsive exercis