Comportamento alimentar e ansiedade em mulheres adultas jovens: situações semelhantes em diferentes contextos

Abstract

Current life conditions can negatively affect mental health and cause changes dietary and eating behavior. It is important to underscore that anxiety and changes on eating pattern are also symptoms attributed to the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle. These situations that compromise emotional health are usually associated with a propensity to desiring and consuming ―tasty‖ foods with high levels of sugar, fat, and calories, as this eating pattern possibly interacts with the central reward pathways, causing a pleasant and comforting experience, regulating and reducing negative emotions. The present study aimed to investigated anxiety and eating behaviors like emotional eating, cognitive restriction, lack of food control and craving for sweet, fatty and traditional foods in young adult women, considering the use of oral contraceptives, the presence of premenstrual symptoms and the COVID-19 pandemic. With the exception of emotional eating there was no influence of the use of oral contraceptives on the other variables. Differences were also identified in scores of anxiety, craving for sweet foods and emotional eating according to the presence of premental symptoms and, in general, the pandemic positively impacted the anxiety and eating behavior of the participants. In conclusion, this study provides new and important information about the complexity of factors involved in the etiology of anxiety and variations in eating behaviors, highlighting the importance of studying different environments and different contexts, as these can generate different responses in people to similar situations.