Motivation and emotion dysregulation associated with pathological exercise among individuals with eating disorder psychopathology

Pathological exercise, or exercise that is pursued in a rigid, compulsive, or extreme fashion, is omnipresent in eating disorder psychopathology. Despite this, minimal guidance exists in current treatment manuals for shaping pathological exercise behavior, which has led clinicians to prescribe total abstinence until treatment concludes. The purpose of this study was to better characterize pathological exercise using two relevant descriptive constructs – emotion regulation and motivation – to increase the specificity with which both pathological and healthy exercise is described, to ultimately inform treatment interventions. The present study aimed to identify types of motivation associated with exercise in a sample of college women (n=200) and a sample of adult women in the community with eating disorder psychopathology (n=211). Latent profile analysis was used to characterize homogenous groups of individuals based on exercise motivation. These profiles were then compared on levels of eating and general psychopathology and emotion regulation difficulties. Three profiles emerged describing a sedentary, athlete, and eating disordered group in the first sample, and five profiles describing a sedentary, athlete, AN-like, weight loss, and healthy group were identified in the second sample. In both samples, the athlete group exhibited intrinsic motivation for exercise and scored significantly lower than the other groups on levels of general psychopathology, while the eating disordered groups displayed identified and extrinsic motivation for exercise and scored significantly higher than the other groups on body dissatisfaction and cognitive restraint. Findings indicate that motivation style may be a salient factor in defining pathological exercise and may also therefore be a clinically useful treatment target. Future studies should investigate the dynamic nature of motivation longitudinal throughout the course of illness.M.S.Includes bibliographical reference