Associations Among Stress, Internalized Weight Stigma, Emotional Eating, and Body Composition in Active-Duty Service Members Enrolling in a Randomized Controlled Trial of a Weight Management Program

Background Obesity is a critical public health concern with particular relevance to US military personnel. Stress and internalized weight stigma (“stigma”) may contribute to and maintain obesogenic processes and behaviors, including emotional eating. In this secondary cross-sectional analysis, we examined (1) associations among stress and stigma with emotional eating and body fat percentage (BF%), (2) whether stress explains the association between stigma and emotional eating, and (3) whether emotional eating explains associations between stress and stigma with BF%. Method Active-duty military service members ( N = 178) completed BF% assessment and questionnaires assessing stress, stigma, and emotional eating. Results Structural equation modeling path analyses showed that stress and stigma were both significantly associated with emotional eating ( b = 0.35, p