Module 3

Dieting and Binging

• Dieting usually precedes binging, chronologically.
• The writers of the article propose that dieting causes binging
by promoting the adoption of a cognitively regulated eating
style, which is necessary if the physiological defense of body
weight is to be overcome.
• The behavioral reaction of binge eating is best understood in
cognitive, not physiological, terms. By supplanting
physiological regulatory controls with cognitive controls,
dieting makes the dieter vulnerable to disinhibition and
consequent overeating.
• In other words, dieting trains the person to eat with their
mind, and not their body.
 Dieting and Binging
• There is considerable evidence that dieting and binging co-
occur.
• Some people with anorexia (binge-eating type) tend to
practice dramatic dietary restrictions when they are not
actually binging.

• Bingers, in short, tend to be dieters.

• This is not surprising because it seems only natural for
people who binge to diet afterwards in order to
compensate for their excessive eating.
• The writers do not believe that binge eating "causes“
dieting, however. They believe dieting causes binging.
 Dieting and Binging
• For example, a primary characteristic of anorexia
clients is their "relentless pursuit of thinness", and
such clients appear to be "super-dieters" . Yet,
approximately 50% of these "super-dieters" exhibit
bulimia.
• However, even in bulimic clients who do not suffer
from anorexia, dieting of some sort seems generally to
have preceded the onset of binge eating.
• Thus, prior deprivation produced a tendency to overeat
subsequently, even after the weight lost during the
deprivation phase had been regained.
 Eating Patterns
• Dieters have consistently exhibited a counter-regulation pattern in which they eat
little ‘ad lib’ (as one pleases) food (thus maintaining their diets) after no preload or
a small forced preload, but eat a great deal of food ad lib after being forced to
consume large, high-calorie preloads
• In other words, dieters stay strictly on their diets prior to binging, but eat freely
and a large amount once the diet is ‘broken’
• Nondieters, by contrast, exhibit normal regulation in that they eat much more ad
lib food after no preload or a small forced preload than after a large forced
preload.
• It seems that, for the dieters, the high-calorie forced load triggers overeating by
ruining the diet temporarily and unleashing the sort of lusty eating that is
chronically restrained in the dieter

• Nondieters eat less when they are anxious than when they are calm, presumably
because of the appetite suppressing sympathetic effects of stress.
• Dieters, however, eat small, diet-maintaining amounts when calm, but eat
somewhat more when distressed
 Triggers of Binging
• Depression is found to be associated with weight loss in nondieters,
but with weight gain in dieters

• Alcohol suppresses eating in nondieters, possibly owing to its high

calorie content. Dieters, however, eat large amounts following
alcohol.

• Almost any disinhibitor may disrupt the dieter's characteristic

restraint and release suppressed eating.
• The preceding stimuli for bingers are often unrecognized before
therapy, but once identified (in therapy), they seem similar to
stimuli such as emotional arousal, having eaten something “bad”,
uncertainty about what there will be to eat later, etc.
 Set-Point Weight & Binging
• Set-Point weight: the weight at which one’s body maintains with
minimal effort.
• Successful dieting produces weight loss, which leads to a state of
chronic hunger, especially if the weight loss leaves the dieter at a
weight below set-point weight
• Debate continues over the value of the set-point construct. Some
have found fault with the notion that a specific level of weight or fat
is forcefully defended by one’s body.

• The precise mechanisms by which a person is impelled to overeat

when below set point are as yet largely unexplored. They may
include, however, heightened internal pressures to eat (i.e.,
increased hunger); heightened external inducements to eat (i.e.,
increased appetite, as in enhanced palatability of foods); and/or
lowered inhibitions on eating.
 Cognitive & Situational Factors
• Despite the heightened digestive and pre-digestive
responses to food in dieters, there was no evidence of
overeating by dieters in these particular studies.

• The researchers hold the belief that differences in

eating behavior are to be understood by reference to
disinhibiting situational or cognitive factors.

• The role of cognitions and situational pressures is

crucial in the instigation of binge eating.
 Metabolism and Binging
• If there is a dearth of food available, the organism is better served by physiological
adjustments that render what is available more useful--by means of what has
come to be known as a thrift metabolism—rather than by promptings to acquire
more food when there simply is no more to be acquired, or when the energy
expended in acquiring more might well exceed the energy content of the food
itself. In short, in an ecology of scarcity, we are better served by metabolic
adjustments than by behavioral adjustments.

• Indeed, if a behavioral adjustment were to be made, it would probably be in the

direction of decreased activity. Decreased activity, however, reduces the likelihood
of augmenting food acquisition. Such lethargy, though, is the characteristic human
response to severe food deprivation

• In sum, it appears that the physiological consequences of weight loss find ample
expression at the metabolic level. Binge eating, although following dieting, may
not be the direct result of the physiological changes involved in weight loss.
 Cognitive Factors
• Cognitive factors may be more important determinants of food
intake on a given occasion than physiological factors.
• The disinhibitory or restraint-releasing situations discussed earlier
involve manipulations of mental factors such as mood or the belief
that one has ingested alcohol.
• Thus, the overeating or counterregulation of restrained eaters
seems to be critically mediated by cognitions. As long as the dieters
believe themselves to be "in control," with their diets intact, they
eat frugally, but when they believe that their diets have been
violated or that they are no longer capable of controlling their
intake, they overeat or even binge.
• For instance, dieters are not immune to the influence of palatability.
Woody et al. (1981) found that bad-tasting (quinine-adulterated) ice
cream was not overeaten by preloaded dieters, although good-
tasting ice cream was.
 Cognitive vs. Physiological Eating
• Restrained eaters whose restraint is intact eat less food
(palatable or not) than do either disinhibited dieters or
nondieters; cognitive disinhibitors of almost any kind can
reverse this relation.

• The original inhibition--dieting itself--is also a cognitively

mediated activity. Individuals who diet do so not because
their physiology requests it; they diet for personal reasons
usually at variance with physiological well-being

• Thus, the conceptual basis for the proposal that dieting

causes binging is the substitution of cognitive controls on
eating for physiological controls.
 Dieting Process
• ‘Successful dieting’ virtually requires that the dieter ignore body weight
regulatory pressures as represented in the experiences of hunger and
satiety (feeling full).
• This demands that physiological controls, which by themselves are
conducive to a "desirable“ weight level, be replaced with cognitive
controls designed specifically to achieve a lower weight in line with the
dieter's personal aspirations.

• The ascendancy of cognitive controls, then, represents the replacement

of automatic, homeostatic controls with controls that are characterized
by deliberation and the absence of powerful negative feedback
regulators.

• But it also means that the dieter becomes vulnerable to unregulated

overeating (as the price for nonregulatory undereating). When the
inhibitory cognitions on which the dieter depends are interfered with,
overeating ensues.
 Dieting & Cognition
• Weight loss and self-starvation result in an increased preoccupation with
food. Food, eating, and weight begin to dominate the dieter's thoughts.
• This form of dichotomous thinking involves the discrimination of "good"
(diet) foods from "bad," and "good" from "bad" (diet-breaking) amounts.
• Such rigid distinctions contribute to the dieter's continuing struggle with
food; the dieter must progressively increase his or her reliance on cognitive
controls to inhibit intake because normal hunger signals tend not to be
appeased by "good“ amounts of "good" foods. Such signals must be
distorted, suppressed, or ignored.

• Anything that disrupts the dieter's cognitive control or restraint,

however, unleashes overeating, as an almost inevitable consequence of a
situation that allows for only “good” dieting behavior or “bad” binging
behavior.
• The causal link between dieting and binging, then, can be traced to the
dieter's imposition of cognitive controls.
 Social Suppression & Binging
• Some studies indicate that cognitive manipulations might be effective in
preventing binges....Unfortunately, such socially induced "sensible" eating lasted
only as long as the observer was present.
• Thus, the presence of another person, especially one who eats lightly and/or
claims to be a dieter, appears to inhibit eating in restrained eaters.
• However, this suppression appears to depend on the presence of the other person
throughout the eating session. Whether the social suppression of overeating can
be internalized remains a question for future research.
• Altering the "cognitive field" of the dieter, then, seems to have at least some
short-term value in curtailing disinhibited eating.

• If a greater prevalence of dieting ought to produce, in turn, a greater prevalence of

binge eating, then the societal pressures toward thinness that have escalated in
recent years--and which have been implicated in the upsurge of anorexia and
dieting in general--ought to be reflected in a general increase in bulimia.

• Perhaps dieting is the disorder that we should be attempting to cure.