Disruption Tired Food Habits during Pandemic (Covid-19) and Its Relationship to Self-Regulation Strategies, Psychological and Behavioral Responses Overweight Women

Abstract

This study sought to reveal the relationship between the disruption of food habits followed during the COVID-19 pandemic for overweight women, self-regulation strategies, and psychological and behavioral responses. It also aimed to identify the most prominent disruption of food habits followed during the Covid-19 pandemic to the target-group study and to identify the differences in food habits, self-regulation strategies, and psychological and behavioral responses according to a number of variables (age, weight, exercise, economic level, the presence of chronic diseases such as blood pressure and diabetes). Moreover, this study aimed to determine the degree of relative contribution to predicting self-regulation strategies and psychological and behavioral responses through food habits followed during the pandemic. The study sample consisted of (398) women who regularly visit obesity clinics and fitness centers before and after the pandemic (COVID-19) because they suffer from overweight in Riyadh city. Those who responded to the study tools after verifying their psychometric properties, namely: The scale of disturbance of food habits during the Covid-19 Pandemic) prepared by (Johnson, Wardle, & Griffith, 2002), the brief self-regulation strategies scale was prepared by (Chen & Lin, 2018) and the psychological and behavioral response scale was prepared by (Balkhi, Nasir, Zehra, &Riaz, 2020).

The results of the study indicated that there were apparent differences in the arithmetic means and standard deviations, as the disturbance of the food habits followed during the Covid-19 pandemic came to a high degree with the arithmetic mean (47.05). Then the higher arithmetic means of the measure of self-organizing strategies scale (the first dimension) to achieve the aim where the arithmetic mean, reaching (27.54), and in the last place was the third dimension (modification) with arithmetic mean (10.73). Finally, the psychological and behavioral responses came at a high level, as the arithmetic mean was (17.79). The results showed that there was a negative relationship with statistical significance at the level (0.05) and less between the food habits during the pandemic and the total degree of the self-regulation strategies scale and the presence of a positive relationship between food habits during the pandemic and the total degree of psychological-behavioral responses. As well as it is clear that there is no relationship between the total degree of the scale of self-regulation strategies and the scale of psychological-behavioral responses.

The results indicated that there were statistically significant differences at the level (0.05) in the disruption of food habits followed during the Pandemic (Covid-19), and self-regulation strategies according to the variables are (age in favor of those aged 40 years and over), weight in favor of overweight people, exercise aerobic exercise for the benefit of those who do not exercise regularly and the presence of chronic diseases for the benefit of those without chronic diseases). Moreover, there were no statistically significant differences at the level (0.05) in the disruption of food habits followed during the Pandemic (Covid-19) and self-regulation strategies according to the economic level variable. Finally, the results showed the possibility of predicting self-regulation strategies and psychological and behavioral responses through the food habits followed during the pandemic, the explanation for the variance was (17.9 %) for self-regulation strategies and (10.1 %) for the psychological and behavioral responses.