Restrained eating

Many people appeal to different dieting strategies because of being overweight and obesity. Dieting is a generic term that refers to specific behaviours or, more generally, to the extent of restrained eating. Restrained eating is cognitively attempting to control eating behaviour for losing weight and for preventing weight gain. This eating behaviour is more common in people who previously experienced difficulty in controlling their food intake. 

Restrained eating has been found to be associated with lower daily energy intake. These suggestion was supported by laboratory taste tests and self reports. Self reports also suggested that restrained eaters take lower energy with lower levels of fat and carbohydrates. Although it is generally thought that dietary restraint is related to less overeating and reduced weight, research findings showed that these attempt causes a pattern of disinhibited eating oppositely. Restrained eating is a mainly studied eating behaviour by previous studies. The mutual relations between different eating styles have never taken into account. However, restricted eating also related to different eating behaviours and eating disorders. Dietary restraint is a form of inhibition and associated with disinhibition which occurs as overeating tendencies as in emotional eating and external eating. Distrupting events, or disinhibitors, described in the literature include certain cognitions, alcohol, and strong emotional states. Restraint theorists postulate that restrained food intake under strict cognitive control is vulnerable to break down by stronge emotional situations. Perhaps the most commonly investigated trait for risk of eating in response to negative affect, however is dietary restraint. In this situation, restrained eaters abandon control and proceed to overconsume. In line with this theory, restrained eating has been associated with negative  affect-induced  eating in a number of contexts, alhough its role has more recently been disputed. Therefore, dietary restraint has also  been found to be associated with excessive food intake and weight gain yet. The long term effectiveness of such diets is also unstated in reviews about calorie restricted diets (24). Some dieters successfully maintain lower body weight, but most diets and also restrained eating are not effective in long term. Frequent lapses from restricted diet occur in many chronically restrained eaters. Specifically, they increased disinhibition when they exposed to palatable food cues with stronger positive attitudes. Between one-third and two-thirds  of the dieters had at follow-up regained more weight then they lost on their diets according to the meta analysis. 

Dividing eating restraint into rigid and flexible control holds promise for understanding some of the conflicting data in the restraint field. Research has shown that rigid control and flexible control are related in opposite directions to some healthrelated and well-being indices in various populations. Rigid control is an all- or- nothing approach to eating-operationalized by behaviors such as actively avoiding and refusing desired calorie-dense foods (and if such foods are consumed, overeating and guilt may follow), regimented calorie counting and dieting to control weight, eating diet foods to avoid weight gain, and skipping meals. In contrast, flexible control is generally considered a balanced  approach to eating-operationalized by behaviors such as taking smaller than desired servings of food to control weight, being conscious of foods eaten, taking weight into account when making food choices, and engaging in compensation (i.e., intentionally eating less and/or healthier alternatives at the next meal) if too much is eaten or less healthy options are chosen at the previous meal. It is reported that flexible restraint is more closely related with a decrease in energy intake and body mass index. As opposed to flexible control, it has been suggested that especially rigid control over food intake (as opposed to flexible control) is associated with disinhibition and higher BMI. Westenhoefer et al. also found that rigid restraint is positively related to a range of preoccupying cognitions and attentional bias to food and shaperelated stimuli. In flexible restraint, although there is an impaired working memory performance, there is a beter long-term weight loss.

High cognitive control also increases the risk for eating disorders like bulimia nervosa or binge eating disorder even worse. Another  problem with dietary restraint is that the body cannot distinguish true food shortage from self-imposed food restriction. These situation incerase feelings of hunger and slows down the metabolic rate of the body. Jastreboff et al. suggested that high restrained eating is associated with insulin resistance in men (2014).

Restrained eaters, lean or obese, stop eating not in response to satiety but because they have reached a cognitively-set limit. Therefore, self-control may also be one of the key differences for weight loss and maintenance of diet for  restrained eaters. Self-control is the ability against to a behavioural impulse for carrying out a higher-order goal. Weight loss and maintenance of a diet can also be one of these goals. Self-control may be intimately connected to succesful weight control so that succesful weight regulators are beter able to control themselves in tempting situations where unsuccesful weight regulators are prone to indulge. Palatable food cues tempt succesful and unsuccesful weight regulators equally. For this reason, succesful weight regulators who are enduring to this tempting situation may be beter able to regulate such positive, appetitive responses to palatable food cues. Indirect evidence for this idea comes from studies demonstrated that food intake is more easily regulated in line with dieting intentions when self-control resources are high. In contrast, when self-control resources are low, eating behavior is more strongly guided by appetitive reactions to palatable food such as positive effect. Further, successful weight regulators have been found to activate a dieting goal in response to palatable food cues, while unsuccessful weight regulators seem to inhibit such dieting goals. It was suggested that such facilitative links between palatable food cues and the higher-order goal of dieting develop when people are repeatedly and successfully able to exert self-control in tempting situations. Together, these findings suggest that successful weight regulators are better able to inhibit appetitive responses to palatable food cues in situations where unsuccessful weight regulators exhibit disinhibition.

It is suggested that increased physical activity can be  protective against to the risk of anabolism and weight regain after a diet. Increased physical activity causes increased caloric expenditure and increased metabolic rate. In addition, physical activity has been found to be related with lower depressive symptomatolog, decreased feelings of tension and a greater emotional well-being. There was a positive correlation between dietary restraint and energy intake following a period of rest, but not after a bout of exercise. This relationship was independent of the nutrient manipulation.