Midterm 1- Lesson 1-13 Flashcards
List the three factors that are reliably related to staying slim
- Reducing caloric intake.
- Increasing exercise.
- Sticking with an eating plan over the long term.
Describe the negative effects of dieting on psychological functioning.
Dieting itself can compromise psychological functioning, leading to impaired concentration, a preoccupation with food, psychological distress, and binge eating. Clinicians who treat obesity now feel that dietary intervention is a necessary but insufficient condition for producing lasting weight loss.
Identify the populations for whom gastric surgeries are recommended.
Since the surgical procedure involves the stomach being literally stapled up to reduce its capacity to hold food, there are some risks and side effects, such as gastric and intestinal distress. Consequently, this procedure is usually reserved for people who are at least 100% overweight, who have failed repeatedly to lose weight through other methods, and who have complicating health problems that make weight loss urgent.
Discuss the elements of a multimodal approach to modifying eating behavior. (7)
- Screening: Some programs begin with screening applicants for their readiness to lose weight and their motivation to do so. Unsuccessful prior dieting attempts, weight lost and regained, high body dissatisfaction, and low self-esteem are all associated with less weight loss for behavioral weight reduction programs, and these criteria can be used to screen individuals before treatment or be used to provide a better match between a particular treatment program and a client.
- Self-monitoring: Obese clients are trained in self-monitoring and are taught to keep careful records of what they eat, when they eat it, how much they eat, where they eat it, and other dimensions of eating. This kind of record keeping simultaneously defines the behavior and makes clients more aware of their eating patterns. Clients are trained to modify the stimuli in their environment that have previously elicited and maintained overeating. Behavioral control techniques are also used to train patients to change the circumstances of eating.
- Control over eating: The next step is to train clients to gain control over the eating process itself. For example, clients may be urged to count each mouthful of food, each chew, or each swallow. Longer and longer delays are introduced between mouthfuls so as to encourage slow eating (which tends to reduce intake). Clients are urged to enjoy and savor their food. Clients are also trained to gain control over the consequences of the target behavior and are trained to reward themselves for activities they carry out successfully.
- Adding exercise: As people age, increasing exercise is essential just to maintain weight and avoid gaining it. High levels of physical activity are associated with initial successful weight loss and with the maintenance of that weight loss among both adults and children.
- Controlling self-talk: Participants in many weight-loss programs are urged to identify the maladaptive thoughts they have regarding weight loss and its maintenance and to substitute positive self-instruction. Positive expectations and satisfaction with ones treatment outcome are both tied to weight loss. A strong sense of self-efficacy, that is, the belief that one will be able to lose weight, also predicts weight loss.
- Social support: Because clients with high degrees of social support are more successful than those with little social support, most multimodal programs include training in eliciting effective support from families, friends, and coworkers.
- Relapse prevention: Clients in these programs are encouraged to rehearse high-risk situations, developing effective coping strategies for stress and learning how to remove temptation from their environments.
Identify the work-site intervention that is most effective.
A number of weight-loss programs have been initiated through the work site, and a technique that has proven especially effective has been competition between work groups to see which group can lose the most weight and kept it off. It may be that team competitions are successful because they draw effectively on social support or that the arousal produced by a competitive spirit motivates people to work harder to maintain weight loss.
Describe the social engineering strategies recommended by the World Health Organization.
The World Health Organization has argued for several changes, which include food labels that contain more nutrition and serving size information, a special tax on foods that are high in sugar and fat (the so-called “junk food” tax), and a restriction of advertising to children.
