Exam 3: Psychology of Eating and Diet/Exercise Flashcards
why is eating important? (4)
- Do it several times a day
- Food choices impact health
- Source of pleasure/reinforcement
- Crucial for sustaining life
definition of everything by Hua tribe of Papau
that which can be eating and that which cannot
how does eating cut across all areas of psychology? (7)
- Developmental: how infants regulate food intake
- Cognitive: memory/cognition impact how much is eaten
- Social: eating is influenced by other people and situations
- Clinical: disordered eating
- Health: eating has clear health effects
- Personality: individual differences in eating habits
- Cultural: major differences across cultures
What determines how much people eat?
When others are, after you workout, reward, hungry, weight goals, routine (time), see/smell food
what the hell effect (boundary model)
with dieters, they create a boundary in their mind about how much food they are allowed to eat but when you cross the boundary there is nothing to stop you from continuing to eat more
- Ignore feelings of hunger and ignore feelings of fullness ⇒ focus on their own rules about fat or calories
results of dieters with no milkshakes
eat a little bit of ice cream after
results of dieters with 2 milkshakes
eat a lot of ice cream after
results of non dieters with 0 milkshakes
eat a lot of ice cream after
results of non dieters with 2 milkshakes
eat a little bit after
if your eating is regulated by hunger how do you act?
you don’t tend to binge eat ⇒ eat in response to hunger as a healthy eater
what are contributions of the first diet study? (4)
- Dieters regulate their eating differently than non dieters
- Dieting may lead to binge eating
- Recognized dieters are an important group for psychologists to study
- Inventing a new methodology for studying eating
Consumption of dieters vs non dieters when a non fat preload is labeled as high fat
- dieters thought they broke their diet but didn’t actually
- Still ate a lot just as if they the high calorie shake was real
- Not about fat or sugar but about cognitive factors
what did consumption of a non fat preload labeled as high fat show?
eating a certain amount was not a biological impulse
Consumption of dieters vs non dieters when a high fat preload is labeled as non fat
- Don’t feel like they broke their diets
- The dieter bar isn’t tall because they don’t believe they ruined their diet
Consumption of dieters vs non dieters when stressed
- Stress makes dieters overeat but not other people as much
- Dieters eat more when stressed or depressed
- Sometimes stressed non dieters eat less
Consumption of dieters vs non dieters when others are in the room
- They are influenced by the other person in the room
- This does not affect non dieters as much
conclusions of the pre-load diet study?
- The eating of non dieters is influenced more by hunger than by cognitive, social, or emotional factors
- The eating of dieters is influenced more by cognitive, social, and emotional factors than by hunger
how did people with memory damage and non memory damaged brains respond to lunches given to them?
- control patients with correct memories ate the first meal and laughed/rejected the second meal
- for non memory subjects, on all occasions they ate the first lunch and they all ate the second lunch fully ⇒ they also ate a third lunch
- tells us that memory matters
how does memory influence our meals?
Important for starting and stopping a meal ⇒ more important than hunger and satiety
results of eating study where children ate as much as they wanted for 6 days
- Amount of calories eaten at particular meals from day to day ⇒ highly variable
- Amount of calories eaten per day from day to day ⇒ highly stable
- children regulate their intake by day ⇒ parents don’t think about the whole day
what should parents decide in the division of labor for feeding kids? (3)
- What foods to offer
- When meals will occur
- Where meals will occur
what do kids decide in the division of labor for feeding? (2)
- How much to eat
- Whether to eat at all
→ put good foods out and kids regulate themselves
how to make your kids hate a food (3)
- Reward them for eating it
- Require them to eat it
- Remove it from the normal food rotation
how to make your kids like a food (2)
- Limit how much of it they can have
- Keep it in the normal food rotation
if you want to find out as much as possible about the food someone likes and eats what’s the best question to ask?
What is your ethnic or cultural group
- Food choice is highly based on culture not biology
what are psychological effects of hunger? (6)
- Irritable
- Unreasonable
- Weak
- Apathetic
- Have hallucinations ⇒ visual
- Become obsessed with food
apathetic
don’t care about anything
- Hunger pains ⇒ will do anything to make you feel full
- Cannibalize one another
what cannot be separated in natural starvation cases?
psychology of hunger vs psychology of fear
what was the semi-starvation study done by Angel Keys?
- 36 conscious objectors from WW2 ⇒ lived in dorms for one year
1. Control period: 3 months ⇒ ate freely and lived in one big dorm room underneath the old stadium (3,900 cals/day) - Cognitive ability, organ function, memory, endurance, etc. with trustable measurements many times in the control period => Also did psychiatric measurements
2. Semi-starvation period: 6 months (1,570 cals/day [40% of normal diet which is still a decent amount of calories])
3. Controlled eating rehabilitation: 3 months (2000-3200 cals/day) - different rehab diets to see which worked best
4. Free eating rehabilitation: 3+ months
how was weight and fat altered during and after starvation? (4)
- weight comes on faster than it goes off
- Body fat does the same just more extreme
- Still not back at starting level even a year later
- Metabolisms slowed way down and stayed slowed down for a long time
psychological effects of starvation (12)
- Obsession with foods
- Eating rituals
- Weak
- Tired
- Irritable
- No self control
- Anxious
- Nervous
- Self centered
- Apathetic
- Clinical depression
- Psychotic reaction in ⅙ of people
effects after the semi-starvation study was done (4)
- took a long time for them to recover ⇒ depression, irritability, and hunger pain stayed for almost a year
- Gorged on food ⇒ 11,000 calories per day but reported always feeling hungry without being able to physically eat another bite
- No longer were able to control their food intake
- the only thing that worked for rehab was to give them as many calories as possible
conclusions of diet based on the semi-starvation study (2)
- the amount of food people eat is based on hunger, dieting status, cognitive, emotional, and developmental factors
- starvation can lead to psychological disturbances and food obsessions, and these effects last long after food becomes available
how have rates of obesity changed since the 1960s?
we are in an obesity epidemic since 70/80s
- May be leveling off now
reasons for the obesity epidemic? (6)
- Rise of fast food industry
- Larger portion sizes
- More sedentary lifestyles
- Corn lobby ⇒ corn syrup is in everything
- Successful anti-smoking campaigns ⇒ people gain weight when they quit
- Prices of gas
dieting
severely restricting your calorie intake for the purpose of losing weight
how do doctors answer the problem of dieting? (3)
- is obesity unhealthy
- is dieting safe
- is dieting effective
→ all 3 should be a yes for dieting
what are the standards for weight?
- Became that definition of a successful diet is losing 40 lbs ⇒ only 5% of obese dieters succeeded
- Lowered the standard to losing 20 lbs
- changed to 10% loss of starting weight
- Changed to 5% of starting weight
- Institute of medicine said 5% of starting weight and keep it off for a year (measured when you start the diet)
how does weight loss maintenance work across 18 months
seems like people keep pretty steady weight gain after losing weight
- Would only be reported to the end of the study and never followed up more ⇒ can’t assume the weight still won’t come back even more
- very few studies follow up for 2 years or more
how many times does the average weight watchers customer enroll?
4 times
- If they tell this to consumers it will discourage them
- Companies refuse to let people see their data and don’t even mention it in their business plans
long term diet studies results
studies with control groups (n=21)
- Avg weight change of dieters ⇒ lost 2 lbs (this doesn’t even approach the 5% standard)
- Avg weight change of controls ⇒ gained 1 lb
- Control groups weight doesn’t change
if weight was based on calories eaten - calories coming off what two conditions would exist?
- thin people who eat what they want and don’t exercise
- obese people who don’t eat much and regularly exercise
do genes or the environment play a stronger role?
genes play a stronger role
- there is not a gene for weight
- There are many things influencing our weight that are genetically based ⇒ 200+ genes
what do monozygotic twins show with their weight?
Share 100% of genes ⇒ their weight is really close
what do dizygotic twins show with their weight
Share about 50% of genes ⇒ weights are similar but not identical like identical twins
components of genetic differences? (5)
- How fast you burn calories off ⇒ metabolism
- How hungry you are after you eat ⇒ hormone levels
- Leptin vs ghrelin - How tempted you are by certain foods ⇒ hormone levels
- How much you think about foods ⇒ neurological differences
- How rewarding certain foods are ⇒ neurological differences
- Dopamine responses
metabolism
how efficiently you use the calories you take in and how many you burn running the systems in your body
- How you get thin vs fat people who either eat or don’t eat
how does weight change from the same diet vs overeating?
people on the same diet will have very different responses (both gains and losses)
- same things happen when people overeat
how does weight change with similar exercises?
- dieting gets in the way of keeping weight off because your body responds and changes
- When you lose weight your metabolism changes so you have more calories left over to be stored as fat ⇒ after dieting
- Eating the same calories on the diet from before losing weight will cause you to gain weight later in the diet
- You will feel hungrier eating the same foods on the same diet
mechanisms of diet failure (3)
- biological pathways
- biopsychosocial pathways
- psychological pathways
biological pathways in diet failure?
Negative calorie balance and short term weight loss leads to:
- Leptin and insulin decrease, ghrelin increase, catabolic inhibition, cholecystokinin sensitivity, Anabolic stimulation which leads to:
- Decreased metabolism, increased food intake, and increased fat deposition
biopsychosocial pathways (4)
Stress leads to:
- HPA activation
- SNS activity
- Negative health behaviors
- Increased food intake
psychological pathways in dieting
violation/perceived violation of diet, cognitive load, negative affect lead to overeating
how does stress lead to weight gain? (3)
- Decreased physical activity
- Increased food intake
- Disrupted sleep
SNS activation pathway
SNS activation ⇒ sAA increase ⇒ caloric absorption
HPA axis activation
HPA axis activation ⇒ cortisol increase ⇒ insulin resistance ⇒ visceral fat deposition
how was the calorie restriction and monitoring diet study conducted? (4)
- classic diet
- food diary
- food provided
- control
classic diet
dietician teaches someone how to be on a low calorie diet of 1,200 calories a day and monitoring by a food diary
- restricting and monitoring
food diary
participants just monitored the food they ate in a log
- no restricting and monitoring
food provided diet
restricting eating without having them monitor⇒ they were given food pre-packaged with different menus
- restricting calories and no monitoring
control diet
neither restricted or monitored
- no restricting and no monitoring
results of the 2x2 diet study? (3)
- Restricting diet: cortisol output increased
- Not restricting diet: cortisol output did not change
- Monitoring did not matter
→ dieting may be causing a physiological stress response undermining the diet
evidence against dieting being safe? (6)
- Stress ⇒ consequences of stress
- Mood problems ⇒ depression, guilt, shame
- Cognitive impairments ⇒ preoccupation with food
- Physical harms ⇒ cardiovascular disease and impaired immune functioning, mortality
- Weight cycling ⇒ losing and gaining (bad)
- Telomere length ⇒ shortening
obesity health confounds (4)
- Sedentary lifestyle ⇒ cardiovascular problems
- Weight cycling ⇒ also bad on your heart and more likely for obese people
- Under use of the medical system ⇒ obese people are more likely to avoid the medical system bc doctors are strongly anti fat which makes them uncomfortable
- Poverty/SES ⇒ obese people are more likely to be poor
what are the correlations between obesity and health (3)
- Correlations are not strong
- Correlations are not consistent
- Only the most extreme levels of obesity are reliably related to poor health outcomes (Diabetes, osteoarthritis)
Note: fitness matters more than fatness
when you start exercising what happens?
your health improves before you lose any weight
-Exercise improves your health even if you don’t lose any weight at all
- if you are fit, your risk of death doesn’t change based on your weight
4 healthy habits
- Eat 5+ servings of fruits/vegetables per day
- Exercise regularly ⇒ 12+ times per month
- Drink no more than 1 alcoholic drink/day (W) and 2 (M)
- Don’t smoke
→ you can be obese and be healthy as long as you do healthy behaviors
→ instead of recommending dieting to treat obesity, we should recommend exercise to improve health
