# Executive Functioning, Weight Trajectories, and Loss of Control Eating in Children with Overweight/Obesity: A Prospective Study

> **NIH NIH R01** · MIRIAM HOSPITAL · 2021 · $127,815

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
Pediatric overweight and obesity continue to be major public health issues. Loss of control (LOC) eating is an
obesity-related phenotype that affects approximately 30% of children and adolescents with overweight/obesity
and may impede successful weight control. Pediatric overweight/obesity and LOC eating frequently emerge
during childhood and adolescence, and tend to follow a chronic and unremitting course if untreated. Both
conditions are associated with relative deficiencies in executive functioning (EF), including working memory,
planning, inhibitory control, and decision-making. These decrements may impair one’s ability to appropriately
regulate weight and eating behavior. A limitation of prior research is that it has been primarily cross-sectional in
nature, which inhibits understanding of the timing and direction of influence involved in the associations among
EF, weight change, and eating pathology. Moreover, little is known about the domain specificity of relative EF
deficits in youth with overweight/obesity and LOC eating, nor about their underlying neural substrates. An
improved understanding of the nature and prospective outcomes of EF impairments in youth with
overweight/obesity and LOC eating could inform intervention development by indicating whether treatments
should focus on improving general and/or food-specific EF, as well as which neural pathways should be
targeted to achieve the most robust and sustained effects on eating and weight. The proposed R01 study will
examine prospective associations between EF performance and related neural substrates, and child weight
change and LOC eating. Community-based children representing a spectrum of risk, including non-
overweight/obese (n=60), overweight/obese (n=60), and overweight/obese with comorbid LOC eating (n=60),
will provide repeated assessments of height/weight, LOC eating pathology, and general and food-specific EF
every 6-12 months over 2 years of follow-up. A subset of participants from each risk category will complete a
baseline and 18-month fMRI protocol assessing neural substrates of general and food-specific working
memory. Specific aims are to investigate prospective associations between both general and food-specific EF,
and their neural substrates, and trajectories of weight change and LOC eating (including remittance and
persistence) over 2 years. These data will clarify timing and trajectory of weight change and LOC eating in
relation to EF performance and its associated neural activation patterns. This study, which is the first to
prospectively examine associations among general and food-specific EF, weight trajectories, and LOC eating,
has clear potential to advance scientific and clinical understanding of mechanisms that promote the onset and
maintenance of maladaptive eating in youth and inform interventions to alleviate their cumulative personal and
societal burden. Furthermore, this application builds on the principal investigator’s pro...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10158469
- **Project number:** 5R01DK120597-02
- **Recipient organization:** MIRIAM HOSPITAL
- **Principal Investigator:** Andrea Beth Goldschmidt
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $127,815
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2020-05-15 → 2021-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10158469

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10158469, Executive Functioning, Weight Trajectories, and Loss of Control Eating in Children with Overweight/Obesity: A Prospective Study (5R01DK120597-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10158469. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*