How the capacity to withstand discomfort affects eating behavior.
What the evidence says
- Distress tolerance is the capacity to experience and withstand negative emotional states without reacting impulsively[1]
- Low distress tolerance linked to emotional eating and loss-of-control eating[2]
- Distress tolerance *moderated the link between emotion-regulation difficulties and affective lability — lower tolerance strengthened it, higher tolerance attenuated it. The moderation was measured at that link, not directly on eating*; eating sat further down the modelled path[2]
- Read as a buffer, that is the shape of the result — but it is *an association in one sitting, not an observed buffering; the authors' own summary is that the findings "suggest an influence" which "in turn *may affect" loss-of-control eating[2]
- *Removed 2026-09-02: this bullet claimed a change over time that `cdt02` could not have seen. It read "improving distress tolerance associated with concurrent improvements in emotion regulation and emotional eating." The study is cross-sectional — one questionnaire session — so nothing improved and nothing was concurrent. What it found is that these things co-vary between people*, which is a different claim and is already stated above (card SP97Y7)
- Distress tolerance is a core skill in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)[1]