4 - (SYM 6) Regular Eating Within Personalized Treatment Reduces Food Restriction Behaviors in an Eating Disorder Sample: Evidence That Modular Personalized Treatment Impacts Intended

Eating disorders (ED) are severe psychiatric disorders. Problematic food restriction is a hallmark ED behavior (i.e., defined as problematic behaviors engaged in to achieve a negative energy balance for purposes of weight loss). Food restriction is associated with an increase in negative affect, laxative use, body checking, and is associated with further restrictive eating (Fitzsimmons-Craft et al., 2015). One common treatment strategy used to target food restriction behaviors is regular eating (i.e., 3 planned meals and 2-3 snacks per day, while challenging problematic thoughts and barriers to eating). However, to date, there is no data showing that regular eating, which is the primary intervention for food restriction, reduces problematic food restriction, even though regular eating is a core component of most all evidence-based treatments for EDs. Within the context of a modular, personalized treatment, we tested if the module on regular eating (termed Nutrition, Organization, and Understanding Restriction: Intervention for Sustainable Habits, or NOURISH), targeted problematic food restriction. Participants (current N=13; expected N=30 at time of presentation) were from two clinical trials testing personalized treatment for eating disorders and were individuals who had food restriction as a central ED symptom, meaning that they were delivered regular eating as a personalized treatment module. Preliminary results indicate that regular eating reduced problematic restriction across three assessments of restriction (restraint, restriction in daily life, and overall restriction) with medium to very large effects (N=13, ds = .54, .58, 1.10). The regular eating module also reduced overall ED symptom severity with a large effect size (d = .84). Overall, the current data suggests that regular eating targets restriction. These data are the first to show that regular eating targets its hypothesized target, food restriction, lending support to this type of intervention both as a part of standardized treatment, personalized treatment, and potentially as a stand-alone intervention. Additional testing of regular eating for food restriction, especially in a scalable, digital format has the potential to significantly reduce problematic restriction in the EDs.