Psychological factors predicting weight cycling among Turkish adult women

Today, in the struggle towards obesity, weight cycling is a significant obstacle since most people tend to experience weight regain in the long term even though they accomplish weight loss in a short-term. This thesis has two objectives: the main objective is to investigate the relationship between a group of psychological factors (food-related impulsivity, emotion regulation difficulty, perceived social support, female gender-role stress, and self-worth) and the number of lifetime weight cycles (WC); and the second objective is to investigate the differentiation of psychological factors depending on demographic variables (age, marital status, working status, education level, household income, and body mass index (BMI)). Accordingly, a total of 311 Turkish adult women between the ages of 19 to 63 completed the Power of Food Scale, Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale, Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, Psychological Maltreatment of Women Inventory, and Self-Esteem Rating Scale. After checking for the statistical assumptions, a hierarchical regression analysis, including age and BMI as control variables, was performed. In the analysis, age, BMI, food-related impulsivity, and self-worth significantly predicted the number of lifetime weight cycles, while emotion regulation difficulty, perceived social support, and female gender role stress did not have a significant prediction value. Findings were discussed in light of existing literature with the aim of providing better and more comprehensive building of strategies for coping with the development and maintenance of obesity.