Resilience and Emotional Eating: Gender Differences in Undereating

Emotional eating refers to eating in response to emotional states as opposed to hunger and is linked to stress, which is important for college students who experience unique stressors (e.g., academic, social, and interpersonal) in their college experience. It is also often found to be more prevalent in women, but not always. During the COVID-19 pandemic, females and males reported similar levels of emotional eating, but for different reasons: female emotional eating was linked to isolation and/or extra care-giving responsibilities, whereas male emotional eating was linked to reward seeking behaviors. The purpose of this study is to examine whether there are gender differences in two types of emotional eating, namely emotional overeating (EOE) and emotional undereating (EUE). Furthermore, we wish to see whether EOE/EUE is associated with college student stress and resilience. The sample consisted of 179 college students (108 female, 71 male) who completed self-report measures of emotional overeating, emotional undereating, stress, and resilience. Emotional overeating and emotional undereating showed distinct patterns, with gender unrelated to either outcome. In contrast, higher stress and lower resilience were associated with greater emotional undereating, while no predictors were associated with emotional overeating. These findings suggest that emotional eating in college students, specifically emotional undereating, may be better explained by stress-related self-regulatory processes, such as resilience, rather than by gender.