OBESITY AND EATING DISORDERS: AN ANALYSIS FROM THE EXECUTIVE FUNCTION

Obesity is a highly prevalent chronic disease. Some authors have suggested that obesity shares certain characteristics with eating disorders, and they have gone even futher by proposing that it should be considered as a disorder of eating behavior and food intake. This approach is not new, for example, Guidano and Liotti, influenced by Bruch 's vision, stated that obesity was part of the eating disorders proposed in its structural cognitive model. Vision that Vittorio Guidano maintained later in the Organization of Personal Meaning of Eating Disorders. From the area of executive functions some research has supported this hypothesis of continuity between eating disorders and obesity. This is because people with obesity and people with eating disorders would have similar deficits in some executive functions, such as the ability to make decisions and cognitive flexibility. It has been suggested that these executive functions are related to maladaptive eating behaviors. This review seeks to analyze the results of the research of the last decade in the area of executive functions in people with obesity and eating disorders to provide an up-to-date overview of the state of the art in the matter and contribute to elucidate the hypothesis of continuity between eating disorders and obesity.