Discuss Explanations for the Failure and success of dieting

Discuss Explanations for the Failure and success of dieting

People diet in order to achieve cultural ideals on body weight and respond to body dissatisfaction. K    found that over 89% of the female population had reduced their intake at some point in their lives to lose weight. A successful diet is supposed to constitute as losing 10% of body weight and maintaining weight loss for at least a year. One way of ensuring success in dieting is to focus on the detail of the food rather than the numbers/nutritional value and the boredom surrounding dieting foods. Reddens conducted an experiment wherein 130 people were directed into two conditions. In one conditions, they tasted jelly beans named with numbers and in the other they tasted jelly beans with a flavour as a name i.e. ‘cherry’. They then filled out a questionnaire about the task’s enjoyability. The group who were given a flavour were less bored with the task than the group given a number. This suggests that group one had focused more on the details and flavours of the food and had enjoyed it more. This can be reflected into dieting, with detail of the restricted/repetitive foods alleviating boredom that leads to the failure of dieting. This study was very reliable, variables being easily controlled in a laboratory study. A weakness with this study is that jelly beans are usually a more enjoyable food and so perhaps a longitudinal study with diet food and calorie numbers may be a more realistic, natural study away from the laboratory, controlled nature of Redden’s study. Another component for the success of dieting is support and, again, enjoyability. This has wider world implications in weight loss groups such as weightwatchers. Compared to self-help, weightwatchers was more useful and successful than self-help and also maintained a stable weight for linger, suggesting that a community-like, encouraging environment is important (Miller).

The boundary model starts to explain the failure of dieting. Herman and Polivy showed that a diets range between hunger (the drive to eat) and satiety (feeling of fullness) is much wider than those not dieting and takes more food to reach satiety. Dieters, when they often breach the satiety boundary eat until they feel full and then continue, the “what the hell” phenomenon. In dieters, essentially, they take longer to feel hungry and it takes more food to satisfy. Wardle and Beats conducted a 7 week longitudinal study in which 29 overweight women were subject to one of three conditions; a dieting condition, exercise condition or no treatment. They filled out a questionnaire on eating habits and appetite at 4 weeks and 6 weeks. Wardle and Beats found that the dieters ate more, showing that in dieting conditions, the satiety boundary is likely to be overstepped by overeating to compensate. This may mean that for those overweight, exercise is a better option than dieting. This may also be true psychologically, with the continual failure of dieting manifesting into depression in obese individuals. This study does face issues with social desirability, being about weight and eating behaviours- things many women feel ashamed or embarrassed about and may not be honest in their questionnaire. Moreover, its small sample size of obese individuals cannot be generalised to the public. This may be because, for example, they suffer from eating disorders such as binge eating which may affect their intake.

The restraint theory suggests the more you deny yourself the food you wish, it leads to dis-inhibition which makes you overeat (Herman and Mack). Soetens supported this theory, when dieters suppress foods it almost had a rebound effect and led them to think more about food. Food became more attractive. Odgken questions the theory of restraint and the overeating consequences. He uses the example of anorexia, which the restraint theory does not explain this. Those suffering from the disease continually restrict to a dangerous level and do not eat. A response to this criticism is that it is a mental illness and the anorexics have no choice but to starve. Moreover,  this is shown in the role of denial in dieting, another influencer of failure. This model shows that the more you deny yourself something, the more you think about it- called Wegner’s ironic process of mental control. Wegner asked participants to either think of a white bear or not to think of a white bear. Those who were told NOT to think of a white bear rang a bell more often, showing that being denied to think about something led to inevitable over-thinking of it. Anorexics tend to become obsessed with food whilst during continual denial, supporting this. Keys fed his participants, male Korean conscientious objectors, half of their daily intake for 12 weeks. Although they lost 25% of their body weight (more than successful for dieting), they became obsessed with food and many became binge eaters. This shows that restriction led to obsession and overeating and changed the behaviour and attitudes of an individual. However, this study is extremely unethical-being conducted 60 years ago- and cannot be replicated; at least with humans. It was also an ethnic group of Koreans, which have cultural differences to us in terms of food. Another study even found that Asians were more prone to obesity, and that Asian girls are the group most likely to suffer from bulimia (an eating disorder constituting of consuming a large amount of food and then purging). This could indicate a tendency towards lowered food control and impulsivity or a cultural tendency. This study, however, does explore eating behaviour in males, lacking in other studies surrounding failure/success of dieting and affecting generalisability.

Success or failure of dieting could have an alternative biological explanation. LPL is a calorie storing enzyme which, if you are genetically inclined to have more of, may make it easier to regain lost weight. If weight loss is occurring, the gene becomes active and starts producing more as a response.