Psychology behind Dieting

9 Key excerpts on "Psychology behind Dieting"

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  Psychological Responses to Eating Disorders and Obesity

  Recent and Innovative Work

  • Julia Buckroyd, Sharon Rother, Julia Buckroyd, Sharon Rother(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Interscience

    (Publisher)

  The final psychological perspective which impacts upon eating behaviour is the focus on dieting and Restraint Theory (Herman & Polivy, 1989; Ogden, 2003). Dieting is the conscious attempt to control food intake cognitively. Dieting, however, may not only be a consequence of obesity, but also a cause. There is evidence that dieting is often characterised by periods of overeating, precipitated by factors such as lowered mood and eating a high calorie food (Herman & Polivy, 1989; Ogden, 2003). The process of denial and self-control makes food more attractive and creates a situation in which the individual becomes increasingly preoccupied with eating. There is also some evidence that overeating is reflected in weight gain, particularly in women. French et al. (1994) reported the results from a cross-sectional and longitudinal study of 1,639 men and 1,913 women who were involved in a worksite intervention study for smoking cessation and weight control. The cross-sectional analysis showed that a history of dieting, current dieting and previous involvement in a formal weight loss programme were related to a higher body weight in both men and women. Similarly, the prospective analysis showed that baseline measures of involvement in a formal weight loss programme and dieting, predicted increases in body weight at follow up. However this was for women only. Klesges, Isbell and Klesges (1992) reported similar results in their study of 141 men and 146 women who were followed up after one year. The results showed that the dieting men and women were both heavier than their non-dieting counterparts at baseline. Higher baseline weight and higher restraint scores at baseline also predicted greater weight gain at follow up in women. Implicit within these models are the many meanings associated with food. While cognitive models emphasise our beliefs about foods, these beliefs are reflections of what food means to us and whether a food is attractive, a

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  The Psychology of Eating

  From Healthy to Disordered Behavior

  • Jane Ogden(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  Many men and women are dissatisfied with their body size and shape. Men tend to take up exercise, but for women body dissatisfaction translates into dieting. The translation of body dissatisfaction into dieting is facilitated by the dieting industry, which perpetuates the belief that thinness is the desired state. Further, the dieting industry encourages the belief that body size and shape can be changed, and then offers dieting as the means through which to change it. However, although dieting aims to reduce food intake and cause subsequent weight loss, much research indicates that dieting causes episodes of overeating. This research has been inspired by restraint theory and has highlighted disinhibitory behavior as a consequence of attempts to impose cognitive limits on food intake. Explanations of disinhibition include the boundary model of overeating, which emphasizes the dieters’ cognitive limits, changes in both cognition and mood, a paradoxical response to denial, and escape theory, which highlights the role of self-awareness. Research has also drawn parallels between eating behavior and addictive behaviors. Overeating is not the only consequence of dieting; attempted and actual food restriction can also lead to a preoccupation with food, lowered mood, and feelings of being out of control. Dieting has also been implicated in weight changes in terms of weight variability, eating disorders, and obesity. However, there are problems with restraint theory, with researchers questioning the link between dieting and overeating, the validity of restraint measures, and the nature of dieting itself. It would seem that dieting does not always lead to overeating, and that some measures of restraint specifically select those dieters with a tendency to overeat. It is most likely that there are some dieters who are always successful in their attempts to eat less, but that there is also a majority of dieters who fluctuate between episodes of undereating and episodes of disinhibitory behavior.

  Towards an integrated model of diet

  Many individuals wish to choose a healthy diet. Food choice, however, takes place within the context of meanings associated with food and size, which can result in weight concern. In particular, women feel dissatisfied with their body size and shape and this dissatisfaction often results in dieting. But the goal of dieting is often sabotaged by the psychological consequences of imposing limits upon food intake, and attempts to choose a healthy diet become more problematic. Eating is also associated with other more extreme problems. Obesity is one of these problems and is the focus of the next chapter.

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  The Goal Conflict Model of Eating Behavior

  Selected Works of Wolfgang Stroebe

  • Wolfgang Stroebe(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  Mechanism of dieting success Passage contains an image

  6Healthy cognition

  Processes of self-regulatory success in restrained eating

  Esther K. Papies, Wolfgang Stroebe and Henk Aarts

  The ability to overcome one’s first impulses in order to strive for a more abstract, higher order goal is crucial in many domains of life. Such efforts have been termed self-control , or self-regulation , and attracted a large amount of research from psychologists (Vohs & Baumeister, 2004). What seems to be crucial in order to ward off attractive temptations that constitute a challenge for self-regulation is to keep in mind the goal one eventually wants to reach (Shah, Friedman, & Kruglanski, 2002). It is easier, for example, to resist buying an attractive-looking pair of shoes if you remind yourself of the fancy car you are saving for, and the dieter may be able to resist a tempting dessert only by thinking about his or her desire for a slim figure. At the same time, those who spontaneously “forget” that they were on a diet while standing in front of the buffet are likely to succumb to the temptations of tasty food and will be less successful in their dieting attempts. In the present research, we address this issue by examining the impact of temptation cues on the accessibility of the overriding goal, and we will show how this is related to actual success in goal pursuit.

  An area in which self-regulation seems to be especially difficult for many people is the domain of eating and dieting behavior. The prevalence of overweight and obesity is constantly increasing in Western societies (Flegal, 2005), and dieting is a very popular means of weight regulation (Kruger, Galuska, Serdula, & Jones, 2004). However, most people find it difficult to maintain a successful weight loss diet. Only a small minority of dieters are able to reduce their body weight in the long term while the majority at least regain the weight initially lost through dieting (Jeffery et al., 2000; Mann et al., 2007). Thus, trying to diet seems to be a largely ineffective strategy for reducing one’s body weight.

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  The Psychology of Nutrition

  • David Booth(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 9 Psychology and the Sciences of Food and Health

  This chapter places psychological science among the several different sciences and professions that deal with food, nutrition and eating behaviour.

  Psychology of Eating and Drinking

  Psychology is the science whose defining duty is the systematic empirical study of mental processes that inform the observable behaviour of individual human beings, and indeed of members of other species. Thus, eating and drinking and thoughts and feelings about foodstuffs and beverages should be one of the major areas of research, teaching and application in psychology.

  Curiously, it is not. What we do overtly and in our heads about food and drink has occupied a far lower proportion of psychologists' time, historically and to the present, than the fraction of waking life that people generally spend doing those things. Worse, the research community that specializes in the study of ingestive behaviour has largely been cut off from the main areas of research into human psychology.

  For example, fundamental and applied experimental psychology can be considered to be the core of the academic discipline. Commonly called cognitive psychology in recent years, this central mainstream has more than a 150-year history of accumulating research findings and constructing theory, albeit in fits and starts as characteristic of any science. Yet food materials and the concepts involved in their uses have seldom been used in cognitive psychologists' experiments on perception, memory or language. This is despite the familiarity, ready control and obvious structure of the physical objects and social interactions involved in eating and drinking, their range from the biologically natural to the technological artefact and hence their suitability for analysis of mental processes involved in intellectually rich and emotionally important behaviour.

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  Psychobiological correlates of eating behaviour in middle-aged women

  • (Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Cuvillier Verlag

    (Publisher)

  1.2 Eating Behavior Eating behavior is a part of nutrition psychology. After a definition of eating behavior in gen-eral, this chapter will describe disordered eating behavior in general and, more specifically, disordered eating behavior in middle-aged women. 1.2.1 Definition and Description Eating behavior is a broad term that encompasses a wide range of eating-related behaviors. It includes food choice and motives, feeding practices, dieting, and disordered eating, including obesity (La Caille, 2013). Eating behavior is influenced simultaneously by personal, social, cultural, environmental and economic factors (Larson & Story, 2009). -7-'LHVHV :HUN LVW FRSULJKWJHVFKW]W XQG GDUI LQ NHLQHU )RUP YHUYLHOIlOWLJW ZHUGHQ QRFK DQ 'ULWWH ZHLWHUJHJHEHQ ZHUGHQ (V JLOW QXU IU GHQ SHUV|QOLFKHQ *HEUDXFK I THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 8 In accordance with the holistic approach to eating behavior, physiological (e.g. biological regulation of hunger and satiety, brain mechanisms) (e.g. Schwartz, Woods, Porte, Seeley, & Baskin, 2000; Stanley, Wynne, McGowan & Bloom, 2005; Wynne, Stanley, McGowan, Bloom & 2005) and psychological processes (e.g. cognitive processes, self-regulation) (e.g. Baranowski, Cullen & Baranowski, 1999; Johnson, Pratt & Wardle, 2012) of eating behavior Environmental influences, including economic systems, food and agricultural policies, food production and distribution, food marketing and cultural norms and values, indirectly impact human eating behavior (French, Story & Jeffery, 2001; Story et al., 2008). 1.2.2 Development of Eating Behavior over the Lifespan According to Pudel (1986) the development of eating behavior over the lifespan is influenced by at least three components: 1) internal signals, 2) external signals, and 3) cognitive control. Internal signals are defined as the biological mechanisms regulating hunger and satiety (e.g. Schwartz et al., 2000; Drazen & Woods, 2003; Stanley et al., 2005).

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  Nutrition and Metabolism

  • Helen M. Roche, Ian A. Macdonald, Annemie M. W. J. Schols, Susan A. Lanham-New(Authors)
  • 2024(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  Furthermore, the elevated wanting for sweet foods in binge eaters coincided with them con- suming 50% more high-fat sweet foods in an ad libitum test meal (Dalton and Finlayson 2014). 15.5 The psychology of eating A vast literature has addressed the psychological determinants of food intake. However, early attempts to find out whether people with obesity shared a common obesogenic eating style were largely unsuccessful. Eating behaviour traits have been extensively studied in an attempt to identify potential markers that detect a tendency to over- consume. These eating behaviours influence energy intake through choices about what type of food to eat, when to start and stop eating and where to eat. However, there is wide individual variability in eating styles, which has led to the development of several measures and constructs which aim to capture individual differences in eating behaviour. These constructs are assessed using psychometric, self-report scales, for example the Three Factor Eating Questionnaire and its sub-scales of cogni- tive restraint, susceptibility to hunger and disinhi- bition (Stunkard and Messick 1985). Restraint as a concept was developed to describe the state of chronic dietary concern, experienced by individuals who believe they need to regulate their weight. It therefore relates to a cognitive intention to restrict food intake, which is not necessarily reflected in actual adherence to a weight-reducing diet. Some experts now distinguish rigid restraint, which can indeed be associated with poor appetite con- trol, from flexible restraint, which is a beneficial attitude facilitating dieting and weight loss. Based on responses to multiple question- naires, studies have categorised people by such supposedly permanent psychological traits as disinhibition. People likely to lose control over eating or eat ‘opportunistically’ in a variety of circumstances are thought to show high levels of disinhibition.

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  Companion Encyclopedia of Psychology

  Volume One

  • Andrew M. Colman(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Figure 1 emphasizes the way in which food consumption can be broken down into specific components (nutrient selection, micro-structure of behaviour, etc.) so as to diagnose the effects of various factors on the expression of appetite. The pattern of eating provides a sensitive way of assessing the impact of physiological or environmental features (Blundell, 1984). Of course, for humans, the subjective experiences or cognitions surrounding eating can similarly be regarded as being constructed out of physiological signals and the characteristics of the external environment (Blundell, 1981). Reynolds (1976) has referred to these cognitions as culturally defined knowledge entering the mind to give contours to the world, thus making sense out of physiological functioning.

  As a first stage in understanding appetite, the interactional concept is important, for it lets us know that the phenomenon is not controlled by a single dominant cause. The analysis of appetite will therefore require an appreciation on the interrelationships among a number of factors from quite separate domains. This approach is equally important for the study of appetite in animals and in humans. However, for the investigation of human appetite a further conceptual scheme is appropriate.

  Appetite and Body Weight Regulation

  It has been noted above that appetite can be considered a phenomenon that links biological happenings (under the skin) with environmental happenings (beyond the skin). This interaction has implications for the regulation of body weight. This is inevitable because energy balance is dependent upon the relationship between energy intake (food consumption) and energy expenditure (physical activity, energy used to maintain bodily processes, and energy involved in the processing and storage of consumed food). A positive energy balance (intake greater than expenditure) means that body weight will be gained, whereas a negative energy balance leads to weight loss. Any factors that influence appetite will naturally adjust energy intake, and this will alter energy balance. It is normally considered that body weight is a variable subject to homeostatic control. That is, body weight is biologically regulated. However, because appetite is also influenced by environmental factors, an examination of the principles of weight regulation should tell us something about the strength of biological and environmental influences on appetite. What basic principles can be uncovered?

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  Obesity in Childhood and Adolescence

  • Wieland Kiess, W. Kiess, C. Marcus, M. Wabitsch(Authors)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • S. Karger

    (Publisher)

  In the following I present three areas of psychological interest. First, I describe some factors influencing the regulation of hunger and of appetite. Second, I describe some characteristics of obese children and third some psycho-logical problems that are associated with obesity. I try also to answer some questions often asked about obese children. How does obesity affect individu-als psychologically? Are obese children more depressed and troubled than normal weight children? What happens to overweight children’s self esteem? Have severely obese adolescents and young adults been to a greater degree abused physically and sexually than the population in general? What are the links between eating disorders such as bulimia and binge eating and obesity? Do weight-losing programs lead in some cases to the development of an eating disorder, which in turn, only aggravates overweight? The views presented here reflect findings about young people in our Western world. There are important cultural differences especially when it comes to atti-tudes towards obesity. In many non-Western cultures to be obese is not, or is less, stigmatizing. On the other hand, the trend seems to be that in the present global culture children and adolescents adopt many western attitudes and ideals. It has been observed for example that body shape and weight ideals are changing towards slimmer figures and less weight among Afro-Americans where traditionally heavier bodies were appreciated. At the same time the incidence of dieting in the group is increasing. Psychological Factors Regulating Hunger, Appetite and Food Preferences One aspect of the intricate puzzle of obesity appears to have something to do with the actual regulation of hunger and appetite. The regulation of hunger and appetite is made by complex biological mechanisms. The regulation begins in infancy and is in part influenced by early experiences of nurture and care.

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  A Guide to Obesity and the Metabolic Syndrome

  Origins and Treatment

  • George A. Bray(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  This is shown in Figure 6.2, along with the treatments that will be developed in the rest of this book. The three therapeutic approaches for treatment of obesity that are discussed in this chapter can be classified as cognitive therapies and are shown at the top of Figure 6.2. Cognitive pertains to the process of being aware, knowing, thinking, learning, and judging. Cognitive strate-gies require the individual to learn and practice skills, each of which involves learning skills that need to be practiced to put into play. They work when the individual adheres to the plan and the activities are followed. Adherence to behavior, dietary, and exercise programs is one of the keys to success with each of them. With high adherence, success is improved. When adherence wanes, suc-cess usually fades. The goal of this chapter is to develop each of the cognitive strategies and how they can be used effectively. As should be evident, all of these ideas have a historical past that will be part of this chapter as well. Individual influences Intake Expenditure Stable Fat Activity Basal metabolic rate TEF Wt Gain Wt Loss Carb Protein E n v i r o n m e n t a l & s o ci e t a l i n fl u e n c e s FIGURE 6.1 A model of obesity showing the energy balance concept as a scale in the center with the mul-tiple environmental and social factors depicted in the circles surrounding the individual balance of energy intake and expenditure. Lifestyle, Diet, and Exercise 165 LIFESTYLE CHANGE: A COGNITIVE SOLUTION H ISTORICAL I NTRODUCTION TO L IFESTYLE Lifestyle strategies applied to obesity are a product of the twentieth century. They arose from two quite different research programs. The first was the psychoanalytic tradition that grew up from the teachings of Sigmund Freud. The second was the studies of the psychology of behavior epitomized in the work of Pavlov with conditioned reflexes and the work of Skinner with operant conditioning.

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