[Food restraint and acute stress in women]

According to restraint theory, people scoring high in this dimension of eating behavior should exhibit a conflict between biological set point and cultural norm. In order to explore the hypothesis that this tension should lead to heightened vulnerability to stress, 17 healthy women between 18 and 54 years of age, previously studied from the point of view of eating behavior, were submitted to a five-minute stressful challenge (public speaking). Visual analogue anxiety scales and plasma free fatty acids indicated that high restraint scores predict heightened reactivity to this stressor in women. Such result helps to differentiate further psychological factors related to disorders of eating.