Objectives: Physical activity and healthy eating seem to be protective against experiencing stress and negative affect as well as increase positive affect. At the same time, previous studies showed that people reduce salutogenic behaviours such as physical activity and healthy eating in the face of stress and negative affect while increasing such behaviours in the context of positive affect. Due to daily fluctuations of these behaviours, the present study examined these relationships in daily life using ecological momentary assessment ( EMA ). Design and methods: Fifty‐one university students responded to six daily prompts during 7 days via smartphone‐based EMA . Items examined stress, emotional experience, physical activity duration, and healthy eating. Results: Higher stress and negative affect, as well as lower positive affect, were related to a reduction in subsequent physical activity. Higher physical activity levels, in turn, were associated with less subsequent stress and negative affect, as well as more positive affect. No such effects for stress and affect on healthy eating or vice versa were found. Conclusions: Engaging in physical activity is related to better mood and less stress/negative affect over the next several hours in daily life. Prevention efforts therefore may benefit by focusing on promoting physical activity, particularly when stress/negative affect is high to ‘break the cycle’ of inactivity, stress, and negative affect. Potential effects of healthy eating might be more subtle and characterized by interindividual differences or state effects. Statement of contribution: What is already known on this subject? Physical activity can reduce stress as well as negative emotions and can enhance positive emotions. People tend to eat less healthy food during stressful times, and healthy eating can increase general health. Physical activity and healthy eating have been mostly assessed separately and through retrospective methods. What does this study add? This is an EMA study investigating bidirectional effects of stress, emotions, and salutogenic behaviour. After physical activity, people felt less stressed/negative and more positive; feeling better and less stressed resulted in more physical activity. Healthy eating was not associated with stress or emotion level and vice versa.

Emotional eating has traditionally been defined as (over)eating in response to negative emotions. Such overeating can impact general health because of excess energy intake and mental health, due to the risks of developing binge eating. Yet, there is still significant controversy on the validity of the emotional eating concept and several theories compete in explaining its mechanisms. The present paper examines the emotional eating construct by reviewing and integrating recent evidence from psychometric, experimental and naturalistic research. Several psychometric questionnaires are available and some suggest that emotions differ fundamentally in how they affect eating (i.e. overeating, undereating). However, the general validity of such questionnaires in predicting actual food intake in experimental studies is questioned and other eating styles such as restrained eating seem to be better predictors of increased food intake under negative emotions. Also, naturalistic studies, involving the repeated assessment of momentary emotions and eating behaviour in daily life, are split between studies supporting and studies contradicting emotional eating in healthy individuals. Individuals with clinical forms of overeating (i.e. binge eating) consistently show positive relationships between negative emotions and eating in daily life. We will conclude with a summary of the controversies around the emotional eating construct and provide recommendations for future research and treatment development.

Individuals with anorexia nervosa (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN) show emotion regulation deficits. While individuals with BN use binge eating to regulate negative affect, individuals with restricting-type AN may use self-starvation for this purpose. The current study examined the emotion regulatory function of over- and undereating in response to different emotional states in women with restrictive AN (n = 54), BN (n = 47), and women without eating disorders (n = 68). Participants completed self-report measures assessing the use of emotion regulation strategies and emotional eating. Both patient groups reported using more dysfunctional and less functional emotion regulation strategies than controls. The BN group reported eating more than usual in response to negative emotions but less than usual in response to positive emotions. In contrast, the AN group reported eating more than usual in response to positive emotions and less than usual in response to negative emotions. More dysfunctional emotion regulation related to eating less in response to negative emotions in the AN group. Less functional emotion regulation related to eating less when being happy in the BN group. The current study highlights the need to differentiate between different eating outcomes and different emotional states when examining emotion effects on food intake.

Stress and emotions alter eating behavior in several ways: While experiencing negative or positive emotions typically leads to increased food intake, stress may result in either over- or undereating. Several participant characteristics, like gender, BMI and restrained, emotional, or external eating styles seem to influence these relationships. Thus far, most research relied on experimental laboratory studies, thereby reducing the complexity of real-life eating episodes. The aim of the present study was to delineate the effects of stress, negative and positive emotions on two key facets of eating behavior, namely taste- and hunger-based eating, in daily life using ecological momentary assessment (EMA). Furthermore, the already mentioned individual differences as well as time pressure during eating, an important but unstudied construct in EMA studies, were examined. Fifty-nine participants completed 10days of signal-contingent sampling and data were analyzed using multilevel modeling. Results revealed that higher stress led to decreased taste-eating which is in line with physiological stress-models. Time pressure during eating resulted in less taste- and more hunger-eating. In line with previous research, stronger positive emotions went along with increased taste-eating. Emotional eating style moderated the relationship between negative emotions and taste-eating as well as hunger-eating. BMI moderated the relationship between negative as well as positive emotions and hunger-eating. These findings emphasize the importance of individual differences for understanding eating behavior in daily life. Experienced time pressure may be an important aspect for future EMA eating studies.

Objective: Different subtypes of eating disorders (ED) show dysfunctional eating behaviors such as overeating and/or restriction in response to emotions. Yet, systematic comparisons of all major EDs on emotional eating patterns are lacking. Furthermore, emotional eating correlates with body mass index (BMI), which also differs between EDs and thus confounds this comparison.Method: Interview‐diagnosed female ED patients (n = 204) with restrictive (AN‐R) or binge‐purge anorexia nervosa (AN‐BP), bulimia nervosa (BN), or binge‐eating disorder (BED) completed a questionnaire assessing “negative emotional eating” (sadness, anger, anxiety) and “happiness eating.” ED groups were compared to BMI‐matched healthy controls (HCs; n = 172 ranging from underweight to obesity) to exclude BMI as a confound.Results: Within HCs, higher BMI was associated with higher negative emotional eating and lower happiness eating. AN‐R reported the lowest degree of negative emotional eating relative to other EDs and BMI‐matched HCs, and the highest degree of happiness eating relative to other EDs. The BN and BED groups showed higher negative emotional eating compared to BMI‐matched HCs. Patients with AN‐BP occupied an intermediate position between AN‐R and BN/BED and reported less happiness eating compared to BMI‐matched HCs.Discussion: Negative emotional and happiness eating patterns differ across EDs. BMI‐independent emotional eating patterns distinguish ED subgroups and might be related to the occurrence of binge eating versus restriction. Hence, different types of emotional eating can represent fruitful targets for tailored psychotherapeutic interventions. While BN and BED might be treated with similar approaches, AN‐BP and AN‐R would need specific treatment modules.

A key determinant of food intake besides hunger is food craving, which refers to an intense desire to consume a specific food. Although they commonly co-occur, they are conceptually different and their dissociation is thought to underlie unhealthy eating (e.g., eating in the absence of hunger). To date, we know almost nothing about their coherence (or dissociation) in daily life or about the role of time of day and different food types. The present investigation assessed both hunger and food craving for several food categories in daily life using smartphone-based ecological momentary assessment. Across three independent studies (n = 50, n = 51, and n = 59), participants received five or six prompts a day and reported their momentary hunger and desire for tasty food (a subcomponent of food craving). Consistent across studies, hunger and desire for tasty food exhibited largely similar patterns throughout the day with two peaks (roughly corresponding to lunch and dinner). Examining more specific food categories, study 3 found that although desire for main meal-type foods had a two-peak pattern in coherence with hunger, this pattern was different for snack-type foods: Desire for fruits decreased, whereas desire for sweets and salty snacks increased throughout the day with less coherence with hunger. These findings suggest that dissociations between hunger and craving are found only for snack-type foods, whereas hunger and general food cravings cohere strongly. Interventions addressing snacking may take these circadian patterns of food cravings into account.