Lecture 8- Dietary restraint and dieting

Question 1

Schachter’s Externality Theory

Externality causes obesity

Answer 1

Obese individuals:

Highly responsive to the sight and smell of foods and this motivated eating behavior

Less sensitive to internal cues

(External cues motivate eating behaviors)

‘Normal’ individuals:

Eating occurs in response to ‘internal signals’ (e.g., gastric contractions, hunger, and satiety)

More responsive to internal signals; gastric contractions and satiety

Question 2

Set-point theory of obesity: Nisbett (1972)

Nisbett argued that the sensitivity that obese people have towards external environments, is a CONSEQUENCE of obesity

Answer 2

Idea is that everyone has different set points

Obese people keep their body weight below a biologically defended set point (in order to maintain lower weight; self-limiting food intake)

Ie. Obese people suppress their weight below its biologically appropriate set point value

They do this because of societal pressures to reduce their weight

They operate below a biologically determined set point which is higher than their actual body weight

Thus, they experience chronic hunger

Question 3

Herman & Mack

Anyone who restricts their dietary intake (fat or thin) will experience exaggerated external responsiveness and impaired internal responsiveness.

Answer 3

Developed a Restraint scale to measure this tendency

Milkshake preloading
Unrestrained- responsive to their internal cues; reduce intake of ice-cream according to preloads

Restrained-ate more than unrestrained, after consuming larger preload

Preload forced restrained eaters to overeat (motivational collaspe, preload disrupted fragile resolve to inhibit eating)

Restrained eaters found a loss of inhibition (disinhibited eating)

Question 4

Disinhibition

Answer 4

This idea that restrained eaters would be more responsive to foods and increase food intake after primer is called disinhibited eating

Question 5

Polivy (1976)

How does the manipulation of calories affect the restraint of food in-take

Answer 5

High restrained eaters

The perception of high calorie foods (through the manipulation of a food label) also led to restrained eaters to eat a large number of sandwiches

Energy dense food (added calories) and manipulated food label led to increased food intake

THIS IS support for motivational collapse

The pps essentially thought “yes it has many calories, but I am in an experiment and I have been told to eat it, so might as well continue to eat it”

Restrained eaters were experiencing motivation collapse (might as well go on and eat many sandwiches) measured about of sandwiches eaten

Question 6

Herman and Polivy’s (1984) Boundary Model of Eating Regulation

Answer 6

Restrained:

Diet= Third boundary

No preload you eat until you reach the diet boundary and stop as that point

However, in experiment where you are given milkshake preload; you surpass the dietary boundary

And now eat up to your satiety boundary

Over time, restrained eaters learn this behavior and begin to tolerant the large about of meals

As a result of tolerance building up, over time, satiety boundary shifts to the right, as does hunger boundary

Hunger boundary is also smaller than unrestrained (shifts) because they are used to restricting food

There zone of biological indifference is now larger than unrestrained eaters

Thus, when confronted with preload…

Consume larger about of food than unrestrained eaters

Question 7

Other disinhibitors that don’t require a preload

Answer 7

• > Thoughts

- > Smell

Question 8

Forms of disinhibition

Heatherton, Herman & Polivy (1991)

Answer 8

Found that anxiety and stress (induced by asking PPS to prepare speeches) greatly increased energy intake in restrained eaters

Question 9

Dieting and dietary restraint

All dieters are restrained eaters, but not all restrained eaters are dieters

Answer 9

Dieting = attempt to restrict intake in order to lose weight

Dietary restraint = any attempt to limit intake

E.g. you may just be restraining food in order to maintain current weight

Question 10

Dietary restraint can be bad for your health

Answer 10

Delayed sexual maturation

Osteoporosis

Mood swings

Depression

Question 11

Green et al., (1994)

Restrained eating and cognitive impairments

Answer 11

Dieters and High R eaters= performing worse, higher reaction times

Question 12

Impairment and the ‘deprivation hypothesis’

Jones & Rogers (2003)

Mars Bar

Answer 12

After eating

Huge reduction in performance for dieters

Thus, no linked to spiked glucose levels

hey found after eating, dieters had greatly elevated thoughts about food

The idea is that: dieters are thinking about food after food; higher cognitive load

It is cognitively effortful to think about food, causing you to have to now multi-task

Question 13

Issues with the measures of Dietary restraint

Answer 13

These questionnaires don’t use overlapping constructs, thus it is difficult to compare

Some subscales overlap while others don’t which makes comparison difficult/ complex

Question 14

TFEQ

Answer 14

Cognitive restraint of eating

Disinhibition

Hunger

Question 15

DEBQ

Answer 15

Restrained eating

Emotional eating

External eating

Question 16

Oliver, Wardle, & Gibson (2003)

Restraint and overeating

Answer 16

Disinhibited eating is reported on the emotional eating scale but not on the restrained eating scale

There is increased confusion as to what disinhibited eating is in the field…