Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Eat, Drink, and Be Merry, For Tomorrow We Diet

Urbszat D, Herman CP, Polivy J. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we diet: effects of anticipated deprivation on food intake in restrained and unrestrained eaters. J Abnorm Psychol. 2002 May;111(2):396-401.

Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

This study examined the effect of anticipated food deprivation on intake in restrained and unrestrained eaters. Participants were randomly assigned to a diet condition, in which they expected to diet for a week, or to a control (no-diet) condition. Immediately after being assigned to a condition, participants completed a taste-rating task in which food consumption was measured.

Restrained eaters in the diet condition consumed significantly more food than did restrained eaters in the no-diet condition or unrestrained eaters in either condition. Unrestrained eaters consumed the same amount regardless of condition.

These results confirm that merely planning to go on a diet can trigger overeating in restrained eaters, reflecting the dynamic connection between dieting and overeating.

PMID: 12003461

4 comments:

Fluff said...

This strikes me as something everybody should know. It's basic human nature. Tell a child they can't have something, and suddenly it's all the child wants. Always baffles me that they feel they need a study for this sort of thing...

Anonymous said...

I love these studies. Janet Polivy is a really interesting person who's done a lot of great studies on restrained eating and disinhibition (a.k.a. the "what the hell effect.") I even got to meet her once, because she lives in my city!

Anyhow, I'll definitely have to give this one a read. Thank you for linking it.

Tami said...

What is a restrained eater versus an unrestrained eater?

Janeen said...

TOTALLY agree with this from my own experience. When I'm NOT trying to lose weight or I'm not going somewhere where I expect to have my food restricted (or when I'm pregnant for some odd reason), I eat more normally and I can say "no" to foods that I would not be able to say no to if I was going to be going on a diet or moving to a country where I'm not going to find all the foods I normally enjoy (I did overeat a bit while preparing to leave for Korea but did NOT when I came back to the US because I was pregnant and therefore, couldn't which kind of sucked because I went back for the food!). Only other time I really overate was when I first started college, my first year and maybe even the second year too, because I had gone from a situation of having to fight for food (since my mom never quite got enough for everyone to eat) to having an overabundance of food so I went a little nuts that first year or so and gained 50 pounds because of it. *sigh* The only time I REALLY binged as far as eating went, at least on a daily basis.

Another interesting thing about me and TRYING to lose weight is that it seems like whenever I try to lose weight, my immune system gets worse. Leaving my weight alone, I'm healthy with the exception of a cold or small sinus infection. Actually TRY to lose weight, I start to have issues, especially stomach issues. My body can't handle it or something.