Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Anxiety symptoms are common among adolescents, especially girls at risk for excess weight gain, and have been implicated in the onset and maintenance of disinhibited eating.
Thus, decreasing elevated anxiety in this subset of adolescent girls may offer a targeted approach to mitigating disinhibited eating and excess weight gain to prevent future cardiometabolic health problems. Keywords: anxiety, interpersonal psychotherapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, disinhibited eating, excess weight gain prevention, cardiometabolic risk.
Excess weight in adolescence tends to persist into adulthood [ 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ] and increases risk for immediate and long-term cardiometabolic health concerns [ 7 ], including hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 ]. Adolescence is a dynamic stage of life characterized by interacting changes in psychosocial and physical health domains [ 14 ]. As such, adolescence is a critical period of overall development and may represent a particularly impactful window for the prevention of excess weight gain and its sequelae [ 14 ].
Standard lifestyle interventions that focus primarily on promoting healthier eating and increasing physical activity for the prevention or treatment of excess weight have shown insufficient efficacy, particularly in adolescents [ 15 , 16 , 17 ].
Instead, interventions targeting specific vulnerabilities underlying health-related behaviors during adolescence that affect weight and cardiometabolic health trajectories may offer a more promising approach [ 15 , 18 ]. Disinhibited eating and anxiety, two related constructs discussed in the ensuing sections, may serve as promising intervention targets in the prevention of excess weight gain in adolescent girls.
