Participant characteristics
Table 1 shows the sociodemographic and disease characteristics for the 392 patients included in this study. The mean age of the women was 62 years (range = 33 to 91). The majority of the women were white (82%). Of the participants in the non-white category (n = 70), the majority of the women were Black/African (14%) followed by Asian (2%), Hispanic/Latino (1%) and other (1%). These categories were collapsed in subsequent analyses. Most of the women were married or partnered (62%) and had either a college (43%) or graduate education (36%). The mean BMI for the sample was in the overweight category at 27.21 (range = 18.53 to 63.47) with 27% in the obese range (BMI >30.00). The most common stages of breast cancer at diagnosis were stage I (39%) and II (49%) and 61% of the women had been treated with chemotherapy. The majority of the women were also taking an aromatase inhibitor, the most common of which was anastrozole (61%). There were fewer respondents in the subclinical and clinical ranges of depression and anxiety; thus, the psychological variables were collapsed into normal and symptomatic categories to maximize statistical power. Roughly 1/4 of women (26%) reported problematic levels of anxiety while 9% of women endorsed significant levels of depressive symptoms. Mean TL in the whole sample was 6.07 kb, (range = 3.28 to 8.19).