Previous research suggests that women who report dietary restraint tend to consume alcohol in greater quantities, however most studies use retrospective data collection, which is often unreliable, and no studies have accounted for this relationship with respect to potential changes in alcohol consumption across the menstrual cycle. Therefore, the present study investigated the relationship between prospectively monitored drinking patterns and dietary restraint across the menstrual cycle among females from the general population whose drinking level (7–20 drinks/week) places them at-risk for developing alcohol use disorders. Restrained eaters (RES; N = 51) and unrestrained eaters (UN-RES; N = 55), per the cognitive restraint scale scores from the Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire, provided prospective ratings measuring mood, alcohol consumption, and consequences of alcohol use across one full menstrual cycle. Dysphoric mood increased during the late luteal and menstrual phases in both groups. Although overall the RES group did not drink more than the UN-RES group, the RES group drank less than the UN-RES group during the follicular phase, suggesting that among RES women alcohol consumption may be modulated by hormonal fluctuations across the menstrual cycle. The differences between the present findings and previous research may be due to the cohorts sampled; the majority of previous studies sampled college students, where binge drinking and dietary restraint are more common, whereas this study sampled the general population. Future research should replicate prior studies in a college-aged population using the current design of prospective data collection for greater accuracy of self-reported alcohol consumption.
Previous research in non-psychiatric populations has consistently found that women who show patterns of restrictive eating and/or tendencies towards dieting also show greater alcohol consumption (Bradstock et al., 1988, Bryant et al., 2010, Higgs and Eskenazi, 2007, Khaylis et al., 2009, Krahn et al., 2005, Lavik et al., 1991, Stewart et al., 2000 and Xinaris and Boland, 1989). However, previous findings have been restricted by sampling only a subset of the female population (i.e., college women), retrospective data collection, which has been associated with underreporting of drinking behavior (Whitty & Jones, 1992), and not assessing the role of the menstrual cycle. In the general population, both an absence of menstrual cycle-related changes in alcohol consumption (Charette et al., 1990, Freitag and Adesso, 1993, Holdstock and deWit, 2000, Nyberg et al., 2004 and Terner and de Wit, 2006) and increased alcohol consumption in the menstrual and luteal phases (Mello et al., 1990 and Pastor and Evans, 2003) have been found, suggesting that further research on the impact of the menstrual cycle on alcohol use is warranted.
The current study sought to investigate whether menstrual cycle-related changes in alcohol consumption are moderated by dietary restraint among women using a study design addressing previous methodological limitations. Therefore, changes in mood and alcohol consumption were assessed across the menstrual cycle between female restrained (RES) and unrestrained (UN-RES) eaters, who were also all “at-risk” drinkers, from the general population using prospective data collection. Based on previous research, we hypothesized that all women would increase alcohol consumption in the luteal and menstrual phases but there would be a greater increase in RES eaters than the UN-RES eaters.
