Clarissa Dakin

Profile

As a post-doctoral researcher in the School of Food Science and Nutrition at the University of Leeds, I integrate psychological, physiological, and neurobiological approaches to appetite and obesity research. My work focuses on eating behaviour traits, satiety, and energy intake, with applications in weight management and personalised dietary interventions. I have developed an integrated framework of motivations for eating, which predicts energy intake and BMI, and I am examining its role in weight loss interventions. I am passionate about bridging research and clinical practice. Overall, I aim to identify eating behaviour patterns that influence weight loss outcomes and develop evidence-based strategies to enhance obesity treatment.

Research interests

My Current Projects:

1. EMBED – Examining the Mechanisms that Underlie the Biological Drive to Eat in Humans: the EMBED Study. The EMBED study aims to examine the effect that the rate of weight loss has on the composition of weight loss, in turn, and how proportional losses of fat-free mass affect appetite and energy intake following weight loss and weight loss maintenance. This study will provide a framework to examine the relationships between body structure, composition, and physiological function, and the way these interactions influence key psychological and behavioural determinants of appetite to better understand the changes in appetite that oppose weight loss.

2. MEP-7 – Motivations for Eating Profile. I have developed a framework of eating behaviour traits which identified 7 core dimensions of motivation to eat. This has led to the development of the motivations for eating profile (MEP-7) which is currently under validation in the UK, Spain and New Zealand. The MEP-7 is predictive of body weight and other health outcomes and is currently being used in a large UKRI funded RCT the 'EMBED study.' The MEP-7 will be used to track motivation to eat changes across a weight loss intervention. It is also being used to identify patterns or profiles of eating behaviours that can aid or hinder weight loss and weight maintenance to inform personalised strategies for the management of eating and body weight.

My Past Projects:
1. NoHoW – A multicentre 2x2 factorial randomised controlled trial investigating an evidence-based digital toolkit for weight loss maintenance in European adults.
2. SWEET – A 5-year multidisciplinary project engages stakeholders from across the food chain — consumers, patients, health professionals, scientists, policy makers, and regulators — to address the role of sweeteners in weight control, and potentially move viable products to market.
3. SatMap – This project maps the satiety value of 312 representative foods commonly available to UK consumers, using a structured, stratified sample of foods. We have begun to build predictive models which combine participant-level and food level analysis (nutritional composition, physical and sensory attributes of foods) using multi-level models to predict perceived satiety and food reward (e.g. liking, wanting, and hedonic overconsumption).
4. Preload Study Project – An experimental study designed to objectively measure satiety in a sub-sample of foods that are representative of the nutritional properties of food clusters in the UK diet using gold standard laboratory measures.

Qualifications

• University of Leeds – PhD Psychology – 2021 – 2024
• University of Leeds – BSc Psychology – 1st class (Hons) 2018 – 2021.

Professional memberships

• The European Association for the Study of Obesity, Early Career Network
• Society for the Study of Ingestive Behaviour
• British Feeding and Drinking Group, Early Career Network
• International Behavioural Trials Network