Mental Health, Behavior Change Skills, and Eating Behaviors in Postpartum Women.
Yang Yu, Qianheng Ma, Isabel Diana Fernandez and 1 others
PMID 34088249WHAT IT FOUND
Postpartum women who weighed themselves more often had higher compensatory and routine restraint.
Depressive symptoms and stress were associated with emotional and external eating. Healthy eating self-efficacy was also associated with routine restraint.
Key findings
01Self-weighing was associated with higher compensatory restraint and higher routine restraint over 18 months.
02Depressive symptoms were associated with higher routine restraint, emotional eating, and external eating over 18 months.
03Perceived stress was associated with higher emotional eating, and stress appeared to weaken the protective association of self-efficacy with emotional eating.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
424 women were analysed, but 543 women were excluded from the 967 who completed the 6-month assessment, and excluded women differed from analysed women in age, BMI, depressive symptoms, self-weighing, self-efficacy, and eating behaviors. The sample was mostly white, non-Hispanic, married, employed, and college-educated. This restricts generalizability. All exposures and outcomes were self-reported. The study tested associations, not causal effects. It did not show that changing self-weighing, self-efficacy, stress, or depressive symptoms will change eating behavior. Anxiety, dietary intake, and physical activity were not measured or controlled. Some findings changed in sensitivity analysis, including the stress and emotional eating association and the depressive symptoms and healthy eating self-efficacy interaction.
Declared interests
The supplied article metadata lists NIH extramural research support. The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that reducing self-weighing or improving self-efficacy will improve eating behavior. This study measured associations over time. Frequent self-weighing and higher healthy eating self-efficacy were linked to more routine restraint, not shown to cause it.