ArticleJournal of eating disorders2023
The relationship between exercise addiction, eating disorders, and insecure attachment styles among recreational exercisers.
Article in Journal of eating disorders, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Exercise Craving: A Scale Development Study.Health science reports · 2026Article
- The mediating effects of perceived stress and exercise addiction risk on the relationship between body image state and emotional eating among college students.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Male body image in focus: muscularity-oriented eating behaviours, muscle dysmorphia, and exercise addiction in gay and heterosexual men.Journal of eating disorders · 2025Article
- Exercise addiction and disordered eating in young Lebanese regular sport practitioners: the indirect role of body appreciation and body dysmorphic concerns.Journal of eating disorders · 2025Article
- Family Functioning Styles and Exercise Addiction: Disengaged, Enmeshed, and Rigid Family Patterns Are Associated with Exercise Addiction.European journal of investigation in health, psychology and education · 2024Article
- Recent insights in the correlation between social media use, personality traits and exercise addiction: a literature review.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Review
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundExercise addiction (EA) and eating disorders (ED) frequently co-occur in both professional and amateur athletes, with up to 48% of individuals with EA also exhibiting symptoms of ED. Furthermore, pathological attachment styles have been linked to both EA and ED. The current study aimed to explore the unique association between types of insecure attachment styles (i.e., anxiety or avoidance) and EA and ED.
methodFour hundred and five Israelis (199 women, 206 men) who were recreational exercisers (i.e., exercised at least four hours a week for at least one year) with ages ranging from 18 to 78 (M = 38, SD = 12.31) completed a set of questionnaires, including the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26), Exercise Addiction Inventory, and the Experiences in Close Relationship Scale. Path analysis was used to simultaneously examine the associations of attachment anxiety and avoidance with EA and ED symptoms. Attachment anxiety and avoidance were specified as independent variables predicting ED and EA symptoms and were entered into the analysis as two parallel dependent variables.
resultsThe results of the study indicate that attachment anxiety is positively associated with symptoms of EDs, while the association between attachment anxiety and symptoms of EA is not significant. On the other hand, attachment avoidance shows a positive association with symptoms of exercise addiction, but no significant association with symptoms of EDs is found.
conclusionsThese results imply that the anxious attachment regulation strategy is highly associated with body image concerns. Furthermore, individuals characterized by avoidance attachment manifest regulation strategies through excessive exercise. Scholars and practitioners could use these results to examine dispositional risk factors for insecure attachment styles and to assess specific pathologies among the population of recreational exercisers. The study also discusses limitations, future directions, and implications in detail.
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