Activity before anorexia admission was linked to anxiety, but not medical instability
An admission-time analysis connected greater estimated activity-related energy use with more anxiety and eating restraint among hospitalized patients with anorexia or atypical anorexia.
Based on the published abstract. The full paper may contain additional methods, results and limitations.
The 30-second takeaway
Patients reporting greater energy expenditure from activity before admission also reported more anxiety and eating restraint. Higher expenditure was not associated with the measured markers of medical instability. This is an observational relationship within a hospitalized eating-disorder sample; it does not show that activity caused the psychological symptoms or that higher activity was medically safe.
Activity was self-reported, and data were available for 91 of 116 patients. Admission-time associations cannot establish direction of cause or describe long-term outcomes.
How activity was estimated
Researchers estimated activity energy expenditure from reported activities, time spent on them and admission body weight. They then examined its relationship with psychological questionnaires and medical measures collected when patients entered hospital.
An admission snapshot
Higher estimated expenditure also tracked with older age and a longer period of weight loss. The analysis describes severity at admission; the abstract leaves unanswered whether pre-admission activity predicts subsequent recovery.
The original publication
Self-Reported Physical Activity Energy Expenditure in Patients With Anorexia Nervosa: A Cross-Sectional Analysis at Hospital Admission From the Study of Refeeding to Optimize iNpatient Gains.
Vendlinski SS, Gorrell S, Downey AE et al.
Int J Eat Disord · 2026
- PubMed ID
- 41047835
- Record checked
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