Emotional Disturbances and Obesity: A Machine Learning Approach to Predictive Modeling

Obesity is a major health problem, affecting about half of Europe’s population. At the end of 2022, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially recognized obesity as a global epidemic. Although overeating has been identified as one of the main causes of obesity, we still do not fully understand all the determinants. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to explore the link between obesity and psychological disorders, whether current or rooted in childhood, using statistics and machine learning technology. The study included a target group of 72 women aged 30 to 45 who completed a questionnaire to assess levels of psychological trauma. Statistical analysis showed a low correlation between obesity and stress. However, the use of machine learning methods was investigated to attempt to predict obesity based on questionnaire responses. The Random Forest classification model is significant and the result obtained indicates that the model made correct predictions for about 87% of the cases in the test set. This result indicates a significant discriminatory ability of the model in terms of obesity caused by physiological disorders.