Dieting, Dieting History, and the Regulation of Eating

Whitlow, Jesse

Abstract

Binge eating is a health risk because of the nature of foods consumed during a binge and because binging may contribute to and impede the treatment of obesity. The theory of restrained eating proposes that dieting paradoxically produces binge eating. If true, this leaves obese persons who want to lose weight in a serious dilemma. However, evidence suggests that the Restraint Scale used in most studies of regulatory eating does not measure current dieting behavior, but a vulnerability to impulsive eating. It is proposed that impulsive eaters who want to control their weight may develop one of three eating patterns. First, they may go on a diet to lose weight. The first proposed study tests the hypothesis that impulsive eaters who go on a diet will be less susceptible to overeating than nondieting impulsive eaters. Second, some dieters will fail at their diet, regain lost weight, go on another diet, etc. Such """"""""weight cycling"""""""" may increase satiety thresholds and predispose such individuals to increasingly severe binge eating episodes. The second proposed study tests this hypothesis. Third, dieters who are successful at losing an appreciable amount of weight may become less vulnerable to overeating. A recent study in our laboratory found that successful dieters were able to regulate their food intake following a preload even better than nondieters were. The third proposed study will replicate and extend this study using improved methodology. Overall, it is argued that the """"""""dieting causes binging"""""""" viewpoint held by restraint theorists is an oversimplification and that dieting may, under certain circumstances, further weight loss rather than undermine it. All of the proposed studies will use the same preload manipulation and eating test used in prior studies of restrained eating. While the proposed experiments will study the regulation of eating in the laboratory, evidence suggests that laboratory-based preload experiments are a good analogue for studying actual binge eating. The proposed studies should lead to an improved understanding of risk factors for binge eating and thereby contribute to the development of better treatments for binging and for obesity.