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Up to 80% of individuals with eating disorders engage in dysfunctional exercise, which is characterized by exercising in excessive quantities often past the point of pain as well as compulsive feelings and negative affect when exercise is disrupted (Cook, Hausenblas, Crosby, Cao, & Wonderlich, 2015). Intuitive exercise involves an awareness of the senses while moving and attending to one's bodily cues for when to start and stop exercise, rather than feeling compelled to adhere to a rigid program (Reel, 2015). The purpose of this study was to design a measurement tool to evaluate the construct of intuitive exercise in research, treatment, and prevention settings. The 14-item Intuitive Exercise Scale (IEXS) was developed and validated in the current study with completed surveys from 518 female and male adult participants. Exploratory factor analysis was used to identify four latent constructs, including emotional exercise, exercise rigidity, body trust, and mindful exercise, which were supported via confirmatory factor analysis (CFI=0.96; SRMR=0.06). The IEXS demonstrated configural, metric, and scalar invariance across women and men. Correlations with measures of intuitive eating, exercise dependence, and exercise motivation supported convergent and discriminant validity., (Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

Adolescent girls commonly engage in weight management and dietary restriction with the hopes of changing their bodies to more closely approximate social body ideals. The purpose of this study was to examine biopsychosocial factors that predict dietary restraint. Participants (n=774, Mage=12.38) completed measures of dietary intent, pubertal status, sociocultural pressures, body comparison, internalization, body dissatisfaction, social support, and general self-esteem. Height, weight, and cardiorespiratory fitness were objectively measured. Pressures to lose weight and gain muscle mass, internalization of social body ideals, and friend support predicted higher levels of dietary intent; cardiorespiratory fitness predicted lower levels of dietary intent. Girls who experience pressure, adopt social body ideals as their own, and experience social support from friends may be at increased risk for disturbed eating attitudes and behaviors. Fitness may offer a protective effect against psychological and social risk factors. Additional research is needed to establish the causal nature of these relationships and determine effective methods for reducing disordered eating risk among adolescent girls., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Despite a proliferation of research on disordered eating in female athletes, few studies have included male athletes. The purpose of this study was to determine which of five personality and psychological variables of interest (i.e., perfectionism, self-esteem, optimism, reasons for exercise, and appearance orientation) best predicted eating disorder status (i.e., symptomatic or asymptomatic) in male athletes. Two hundred three male athletes (Mage=20.29, SD=1.64) from three National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I institutions participated. More athletes were asymptomatic (80.8%) than symptomatic (19.2%). None of the variables significantly predicted symptomatic status. These findings contrast the literature on predictors of disordered eating symptomatology among female athletes, and suggest the need for further research to identify other potential predictors of eating disturbance among male athletes., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Dieting to lose weight, with its focus on restriction of caloric intake, may disrupt intuitive eating processes, though other forms of weight loss, such as exercising, which do not emphasize food may not. In a sample of 669 middle school boys and 708 girls, regardless of sex or exercising, dieting was related to feeling less free to eat what was wanted and to eating more to soothe emotions than to satisfy actual physical hunger. Exercising, independent of dieting, was associated with feeling less permission to eat what was wanted, but also eating to satisfy physical hunger as opposed to coping with emotional distress. Overall, girls were more aware and trusting of their bodily hunger and satiety cues than boys, but when boys were exercising, they scored similarly to girls on this dimension. These findings suggest that different weight loss approaches - dieting vs. exercising - have unique relationships to young adolescents' intuitive eating and these associations tend to be stable across sex. Longitudinal studies now are needed to examine how dieting that begins in childhood or early adolescence might have long-term effects on the progression of intuitive eating., (© 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)