The role of anxiety sensitivity in daily physical activity and eating behavior

• We examined the role of anxiety sensitivity in daily eating and physical activity.
• The sample was equally represented by individuals with elevated and normal anxiety sensitivity as well as normal and obese body mass index.
• High anxiety sensitivity was associated with greater overall calorie consumption during the monitoring period in women and less in men.
• High anxiety sensitivity was associated with a significant increase in caloric intake following participants' worst episode of negative affect.
• High anxiety sensitivity was associated with less moderate intensity physical activity among obese participants.

Anxiety sensitivity (AS), or the fear of somatic arousal, has been linked to both maladaptive eating behavior as well as exercise avoidance in both self-report and laboratory-based experiments. The current pilot study sought to extend these finding to the naturalistic setting. A sample of 32 adults completed affect and dietary monitoring and wore actigraphs across a three-day monitoring period. Results indicated that high AS was associated with greater calorie consumption overall in women and less consumption in men, and high AS predicted an increase in calories consumed following participants' greatest increase in negative affect in both sexes. For physical activity, results indicated an AS by BMI interaction such that obese individuals with high AS engaged in less moderate-intensity physical activity, whereas the opposite was true for normal weight individuals. These results indicate that AS may represent a double-edged risk factor for obesity contributing to both exercise avoidance and calorie consumption.