‘Emotional eating’ blamed for women gaining weight in lockdown

WOMEN were far more likely than men to pile weight on during lockdown, because of “emotional eating” as they were stuck at home, research shows.

Scientists said the pandemic affected the sexes differently, suggesting that women’s diets deteriorated as they bore the brunt of “stressful” home schooling and were more likely to be stuck at home.

Men were less likely to suffer major disruptions in routine, even though many were working from home. Leicester University researchers analysed data on 938,000 adults to examine the effect of changes in Britain’s social habits since the first lockdown.

Overall, the pandemic led to 14 percent of people at a healthy weight becoming overweight or obese.

They found weight gain affected women and younger people far more than the rest of the population.

Women were 44 per cent more likely than men to go from being overweight to obese. In total, 13 per cent of overweight women became obese, com- pared with 9 per cent of men.

Younger adults were also more than twice as likely than older people to put on the pounds. In total, 17 per cent of under-45s went from being overweight to obese, while just seven per cent of over-75s made such a shift.

Prof Thomas Yates, a researcher from Leicester University, said: “I suspect lockdown had a differential impact on many women’s lives compared to men.

“Men pretty much carried on as they were, they just worked from home instead. Whereas, those school runs, supermarket shops or those types of things that are [getting] women out of the house more often, [stopped].

“And then you have to deal with home-schooling kids and just a very different way of living, which was probably quite stressful.

“So not only was it reducing activity levels and changing diet, it was stressful and mental health problems are probably playing into that as well.”

“All that socialising, all that need to go out of the house was [stopped].

“So there was a really noticeable difference in that. I think it’s [being] unable to go to the gym, going out to work and socialising was stopped.

“And we know from children and young people anxiety, stress, depression… the pandemic had a marked effect on people’s mental health.

The study, presented at the European Congress on Obesity in Maastricht, compared changes in BMI during the three years before the first lockdown with the following 12 months.

Dr David Klocker, also from the University of Leicester, said: “[Lockdown] disrupted routines making it challenging for people to eat healthily and keep fit, with emotional eating and sports club closures intensifying the trend.”