Weight Stigma and Eating Behaviors in Young Adults across Weight Status

Objective: This study adopted and extended the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) with weight-related self-stigma as a model to explain avoidance of three types of eating behaviors (EB; cognitive restraint, emotional eating, and uncontrolled eating) amongcross individuals with overweight/obesity and without overweight/obesity .
Methods: A total of 348 young adults participated in this study. A series of questionnaires was used to assess TPB factors (including attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control [PBC], and intention) in relation to avoidance ing EB, weight-related self-stigma, and EB . Structural equation modeling with path invariance tests were used to assess the model.
Results: In general, subjective norm, PBC, and self-stigma were positively associated with intention to avoid EB; PBC to avoid EB was negatively associated with EB; however, intention to avoid EB and self-stigma were positively associated with EB. In addition, path invariance between the non-overweight/obese and overweight/obese groups was not supported. In the overweight/obese group, weight-related self-stigma had a greater impact on PBC.
Conclusion: The extended TPB model successfully explained the intention to avoid EB and the negative effect caused by weight-related self-stigma. However, the intention-behavior gap emerged from our results. The underlying factors that prevent people from avoiding EB should be further investigated.