Showing posts with label FAMILY HEALTH. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FAMILY HEALTH. Show all posts

Sunday, September 9, 2018

Why Weightloss Matters With Adult Diabetes


Weightloss is the watchword for most type 2 diabetics.  You know you should be losing pounds, eating a reduced amount of sugar and exercising.  But why is it so tough? to do this?

Type 2 diabetes tends to surface after a person reaches 40 years old, but not always.  Even pre-teens are now being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes!  That’s a sad commentary on our socienty today.
And that is why diabetes and losing weight is so much easier said than done these days; our culture is, “more, bigger, better” which  unfortunately includes food serving sizes.  It’s so easy to just say “super size it, please”.

Losing Weight and Diabetes — Why

You’ve heard it from your health care provider, read it in books and magazines, but here it is again.  If you have adult onset diabetes, you need to be on a weight management system, as well as exercising.  You know it, but do you do it?
It’s a fact that if working out helps your body better handle the insulin available to it.
The problem many times is fitting exercise into our daily schedule.  Raise your hand if you’ve ever said, “Just a few more minute’s sleep.”?  Still weight loss exercise programs raise your metabolism…so you burn more calories when you’re sleeping!
And if your medical doctor has you on medication, it’s very important that you take it as directed.

So that’s the “why” of diabetes — what about the “how”.

Diabetes and Losing Weight — How?

Pick some items from your refrigerator or cupboard and inspect it for sugar.  Don’t bother with the obvious, but instead look at items that you don’t expect (for example – salt).  Chances are, if it’s a processed food, sugar has been added.
Should you do away with all sugar?  That’s not practical for weightloss and dealing withadult onset diabetes.  What you want to do is be informed as to how much sugar you are consuming.
The benefits of losing weight really do outweigh all the junk food and inactivity.

A Low Glycemic Plan for Losing Weight

In the last few years, the idea of following a low-glycemic plan has gained quite a bit of momentum among diabetics and non-diabetics alike.  To put it another way, it limits the foods with sugar that’s rapidly metabolized by the body.
By selecting foods that release their sugar into your body more slowly, your blood sugar doesn’t swing wildly.  This is a big help, when it comes to losing pounds and diabetes.

Check With Your Doctor

Naturally, if you are under a medical doctor’s care for your type 2 diabetes, you need to check with him or her regarding weight loss.  Undoubtedly you’ll get the green light, but you should be monitored anyway.
Weightloss and diabetes doesn’t have to be challenging.  But you do need to consider what changes you can make, to live a healthier life.

Saturday, September 8, 2018

Smart Strategies To Lose Weight Quickly


The  weight loss industry seems to have done a very good job with conditioning people to think they can shed fast in a weeks time. There has to be over a hundred various quick weight loss products offered, now. No matter what, you need to find an overall strategy that works best for you and is healthy. The thing to realize is you may have to try various products to find one that works well for you. Your results will be even better if you eat appropriately and can get some exercise in, as well. You want to lose your excessive fat once and for all without the usual ups and downs.
It is a part of some Western cultures for people to gorge themselves at a standard rate of three times a day. These are the types of servings during meals that are far too substantial and unhealthy. Well, now many of us know, thanks to various study, that the best strategy is to spread the meals out throughout the day. Be aware to the size of the portions, and it would be a good plan if the food was nutritious. Additionally you want to stop eating until your stomach is feeling full. It is also known that there is a small lag time between when you stop eating and you in fact feel full.
Bottled water sales have been thriving for well over ten years, and people have been consuming it for health reasons. Essentially, drinking water is a very well known solution to helping you lose weight. If you are in the habit of consuming soft drinks – you already know how undesirable they are for you – so we will not tell you to give up. Truly, a lot of research has been done over the years about the advantages of drinking water. It is seriously important to get enough daily water because of the daily influx of environmental toxic compounds and various toxins. You’ll be able to keep possibly bad snacking to a minimum due to the water intake removing hunger feelings.
Check for cardiac diet to lose 10 lbs in 3 days
You can make use of the methods we just talked about, plus others, to achieve major lifestyle adjustments and lose all that extra weight. Take it one step at a time, and before you know it you will discover great improvement toward your objectives. Do be careful that you do not lose weight too fast because the common result is to promptly gain it back.

Friday, September 7, 2018

Healthy Lifestyle | Math and Weight-loss


As soon as people find out that you want to lose weight they are going to start showering you with suggestions. Many people will try to be helpful. They will need you to be able to get to your goal weight as easily as you can. The issue you are going to hear the most frequently is going to be “slimming down is only math.” This concept, at its heart, is normally accurate. Obviously knowing it’s math doesn’t make the path easier to travel. Nobody claims to know how to take peace in the math when you’re trying to keep away from your favorite unhealthy snack foods or when you are too tired to keep working out. This article will help you with this.
The center of weight reduction math is pretty simple. If you would like to shed pounds, you need to use up more calories than you soak up each day. Not only will this make your whole body use what you put into it, it will work with what it has stored up too. You will need energy to keep moving and survive and that’s why your body stores fat to begin with; it offers something to burn if you can not eat enough calories every day. If you do enough exercise to burn all of the calories you ingest, logic declares that your weight should stay exactly where it is now. If you do so much exercise that you just burn through all of the calories you’ve taken in but still have to get through your day, the body will turn to your fat cells as a source of the energy you need.
The first way to handle this problem is to lessen the amount of calories you take in each day. Your physician will work on you to generate a healthy calorie count for your height, background and lifestyle. This does two things: it gives you an objective number and a start line for your diet plan. It makes it possible to figure out how intensive your workout needs to be every day. On the surface it looks like almost everything is centered on discipline. It will take willpower to kick the habit of eating once you’ve reached your calorie quota for the day. You require discipline to train everyday to burn through the calories you eat.
The simplest way to keep disciplined is to understand everything you can about how much exercise it takes to burn through the extra calories you take in. Is the sugary soda that looks so tasty worth the couple of hours you have got to spend on the treadmill to work it off? If you have the ability to see just how much work is needed to counteract a potentially unhealthy decision, it should be less difficult to make smart choices (like choosing a bottle of water).
Not surprisingly, there may be psychology at work with you too. Weight loss math just deals with the surface level of what you are about to go through as you work to shed some pounds and get healthy again. This is why it is so crucial for you to work together with another person who knows how to approach health and weight reduction smartly– they’ll help you decide on a good approach for meeting a weight loss goal.

Friday, August 10, 2018

Work Family Conflict



Changes in family structure (increasing number of dual-income earning families, single parent families or adults caring for children or elder family members) and changes in the workplace (increasing number of hours at workplace) induce an increase in work-family conflict (Byron, 2005). This increase in work-family conflict has encouraged both researchers and practitioners to understand the antecedents and the outcomes of work-family conflict and to seek solutions in this regard (Eby et al., 2005).
In order to better understand work-family conflict, some of the related concepts including work, family, role and interrole conflict are required to be described. ‘Work’ is related to tasks which people do for financial gain, for example, being a doctor or being a teacher or also is related to task-related activities which people do not do for financial gain, for example, being a housewife or being a volunteer in a company (Eby et al., 2005). ‘Family’ is formed of at least two people who have interconnecting roles to complete their shared objectives successfully (Eby et al., 2005). ‘Role’ is defined as an expected pattern or set of behaviors that exist in minds of people (Kossek, Noe, & DeMarr, 1999). The Role Conflict Theory claimed that different expectations from two domains (e.g. work or family domain) can be incompatible. As a result, incompatibility between domains is encountered which makes performing one domain difficult than the other domain (Kahn et al., 1964). Likewise, if two or more domains need time, energy or attention at the same time and the resources are limited for time, energy and attention, a conflict occurs between domains. This is known as ’Interrole Conflict’ (Kahn et al., 1964).
People are expected to have different roles in family and workplace. The different roles can be incompatible and one domain (work) takes from limited resources of time, energy and attention that makes performing one domain (family) difficult than the other domain (work). As a result of this, work-family conflict occurs. Accordingly, work-family conflict is described as ‘‘a form of an interrole conflict which reveals incompatibility in work and family role pressures in some respect’’ (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985, p.77).
Similarly, the Social Identity Theory indicated that people determine their identity or their roles according to their belonged social environment (Lobel, 1991). For example, people can perceive themselves as a valued employee or a good mother. Some roles have very important aspects of people’s identity and people gain pleasure from them. When people do not have enough time or energy for their roles, then conflict occurs (Lobel, 1991).
In early studies, work-family conflict was examined in unidirectional way; but recent studies showed that work-family conflict is bidirectional as (a) work to family conflict (work interference with family; WIF) and (b) family to work conflict (family interference with work; FIW) (Frone, Russell & Cooper, 1992a; Kossek & Ozeki, 1998). There are two reasons for this distinction. First, the findings of meta-analysis studies have shown that work-family conflict is bidirectional (Kosek & Ozeki, 1998). Second, there are differences obtained from the studies related to the antecedents and the outcomes of work to family conflict and family to work conflict (Frone, Russell & Cooper, 1992a; 1992b). In work to family conflict, somehow family demands are prevented by work demands; on the contrary, in family to work conflict, work demands are prevented by family demands (Netemeyer, Boles & McMurrian, 1996).
Researchers also showed that both kinds of work-family conflict have three types of sources: (a) time based conflict, (b) strain-based conflict, (c) behavior-based conflict which are shown in Figure 1.1. (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). In the next section, those different sources will be explained in more detail.

1. Types of Work- Family Conflict

When one domain takes a lot of time which leads to difficulty of fulfilling requirements of the other domain, incompatibility arises between two domains (work and family) called time-based conflict (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). Requirement of applying simultaneous performance to both domains is a factor which leads to conflict. A mother who has to be at workplace while she has to prepare her child to school is an example for this type of work-family conflict (Zapf, 2002).
Another form of work-family conflict is strain-based conflict (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). If one domain creates strain feelings which lead difficulty to fulfill requirements of the other domain, incompatibility arises between two domains (work and family) (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985) also named as resource-based or energy-based conflict (De Jonge & Dormann, 2006). One of the crucial points of the strain-based conflict is that one domain should create fatigue, anxiety, tension, etc. in a person (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). Another crucial point is the demand for both domains should have same qualities from similar resources such as cognitive, emotional and physical demands (Haun & Dormann, 2016). A call center employee who solves the problems of customers regularly might not be able to solve emotional problems with his or her romantic partner (both emotional demands) is an example for this type of work-family conflict (Haun & Dormann, 2016).
Last and the third form of work-family conflict is behavioral-based conflict (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). Differences between behavioral requirements of domains lead to incompatibility between two domains (work and family) (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). For instance, at workplace, workers are expected to be authoritative, powerful, rational, objectivity etc.; but at home, being a good partner or having good parental features are expected such as being warm, emotional, vulnerable, etc. (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985).
Three different types of work family conflict have explained by different predictors of work-family conflict (Byron, 2005). Studies which explained the predictors of work-family conflict will be discussed in the next section.

2. Predictors of Work-Family Conflict

According to the Stress-Strain Model, predictors of work-family conflict are stressors and work-family conflict is a strain (Dunham, 1984). Predictors of work-family conflict have been studied in three domains: (a) work domain predictors, (b) nonwork domain predictors and (c) individual and demographic predictors (Byron, 2005).
Predictors of work domain are job and workplace factors which have an impact on people. Inflexible work schedule or unsupportive organizational culture can be examples for work domain predictors. There are also non-work domain predictors which include family domain predictors. Disagreements in family or an unsupportive spouse can be examples for family domain predictors. On the other hand, there are also other non-work domain predictors such as number of children in family or age of the oldest children. Last domain, individual and demographic predictors include personality, behavioral and individual differences, for example, gender, neuroticism, or attachment style (Byron, 2005).

2.1. Work Domain Predictors

Some of the work domain predictors are mostly related to time-based work-family conflict (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985) such as work arrangements (Pleck, Staines, & Lang, 1980). To understand flexibility at workplace, two factors must be taken into consideration; flexibility in timing (flextime) and in location (flexplace) (Christensen & Staines, 1990; Galinsky & Johnson, 1998; Zedeck, 1992). Flextime gives employees ability to arrange their work hours according to the guidelines which are offered by the company (Hill et al., 2001). Thus, employees feel more control over their working hours (Hill et al., 2001). In addition, flexplace gives employees ability to control the place where they are able to work. For example, they can work at home or at office or they can work at virtual place (Hill et al., 2001). Briefly, an important factor in flexibility is ‘where’ and ‘when’ people work (Rau & Hyland, 2002).
When it is compared to 20 years ago, today’s jobs take longer hours of employees. As a result, more time and energy is needed at work (Bond, Galinsky & Swanberg, 1997). Flexibility at work helps employees to determine how they spend and utilize their resources (attention, time and energy resources) on work and family domains (Allen et al., 2013). It is possible to provide a balance between work and family responsibilities by understanding how they use their resources (Edwards & Rothbard, 2000; Goode, 1960). For example, an employed mother can go to the parent-teacher meeting of her child during standard working hours (Allen et al., 2013). Herman and Gyllstrom (1977) also explained the relationship between flexible working schedules and work-family conflict with an example. In the university, faculty members work more hours than staff members; but they feel less work-family conflict; as they have more flexible working schedule.
Flextime at work decreases not only work-family conflict (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985), but also employee strain (Allen et al., 2013), and increases job satisfaction and initiative of workers (Galinsky & Johnson, 1998). On the other hand, flexplace at work increases productivity, improves the morale of workers and also provides better work-family balance (Hill et al., 1998).
For family-supportive organizations, beside flextime and flexplace, having legitimate work-family policies and supervisory support are also important for low level of work-family conflict (Cook, 2009).
Employees want to get fair treatment in the organization which makes them feel valuable in their belonged organization. Work-family policies provide fair treatment as a legitimate action and show employees that the organization cares them and their work-family balance (Cook, 2009). With work-family policies, the organizations show how much they care about employees’ needs and they try to make their employees to feel their importance for the organization (Cook, 2009; Rothausen et al., 1998). Aim of the work-family policies is to balance work and family domains of employees, thus, it helps employees to perceive their organization as supportive for their family (Perry- Smith & Blum, 2000).
For an organization to be perceived as supportive, supervisor behaviors are also important; since they represent the organization (Dutton, Dukerich, & Harquail, 1994; Golden-Biddle & Rao, 1997). If supervisors support work-family policies of the organization, their behaviors will also be appropriate with these policies and they will be helpful to employees to balance work-family domains (Dutton, Dukerich, & Harquail, 1994).
Prabhu and Stewart (2001) claimed that the way how employees perceive work-family policies is also an important factor; because these policies can be effective only if they are perceived correctly (Prabhu & Stewart, 2001). In a study, employees who reported higher work-family conflict, in other words who have higher need for work-family programs, reported that they perceive work-family policies as an important support compared to the others (Cook, 2009). For example, a newly divorced woman having a baby perceives the organizational support as something important (Cook, 2009).
Moreover, Aycan and Eskin (2005) also emphasized the importance of family supportive organizations in Turkey. They found that organizational support is negatively related to both work-family conflict and family-work conflict; moreover the relationship between organizational support and work-family conflict is stronger for men (Aycan & Eskin, 2005).

2.2. Family Domain Predictors

There are some other factors which are family related variables. Family domain predictors are mostly related to time-based and strain-based family-work conflict (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985) such as family involvement (Edwards & Rothbard, 2000). With family involvement, time and energy for work will also be spend for family activities, so family-work conflict will arise (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). In other words, involvement in a role more than its requirement, limits time and energy required for the other role (Hargis, Watt, & Piotrowski, 2011). The Rational View Theory indicated that if an individual spends time and involves to a role excessively, she perceives the other role as a secondary one (Pleck, 1977). Therefore, the number of hours spent on family domain is positively related to family-work conflict (Byron, 2005). Additionally, the Role Theory and the Resource Drain Theory also claimed that family involvement is positively related to family-work conflict (Edwards & Rothbard, 2000). Time-consuming situations during family life, including marriage and parenthood, might lead to higher family-work conflict (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). The study of Herman and Gyllstrom (1977) revealed that married people experience higher family-work conflict compared to single people. In another study, Bohen and Viveros-Long (1981) indicated that raising children is another factor for higher family-work conflict. In a similar manner, conditions that take more time and energy of people such as having a baby or a kid (Beutell & Greenhaus, 1980; Greenhaus & Kopelman, 1981) and living in a large family are also important factors which increase family-work conflict (Cartwright, 1978; Keith & Schafer, 1980).
According to the literature, family-work conflict which is caused by the conditions at home will decrease by social support (Parasuraman, Greenhaus, & Granrose, 1992; Thomas & Gangster, 1995). Social support is described as interchanging the resources between individuals to help themselves (Van Daalen, Willemsen, & Sanders, 2006). In other words, time and energy resources would increase by the help of social support, so dealing with family-work and work-family conflict would be much easier (Hargis, Watt, & Piotrowski, 2011). According to another explanation, there will be an exchange of stress between domains, work domain provides transfer of stress to family domain or vice versa which is briefly described as spillover (Edwards & Rothbard, 2000). Otherwise, through social support, the spillover could be also positive. As a result, people experience less stress with lower family-work conflict. (Byron, 2005). Studies supported the relationship between social support and family-work conflict. Accordingly, social support in family is related to low levels of family-work conflict (Adams, King, & King, 1996), low levels of stress and strain (Bernas & Major, 2000). On the other hand, social support is positively related to health and psychological well-being of people (Cohen, 1988).
In the literature, especially for women, spousal support is a social support which decreases family-work conflict (Adams, King, & King 1996; Aycan & Eskin,2005). In a study of Ely, Stone & Ammerman (2014), which was aimed to reveal the impact of spousal support among MBA graduates of Harvard University showed that spousal support was influential on management careers of women, even they were married and had children. On the other hand, women who did not have spousal support were not able to reach their desired career planning and they claimed their marriage and children were the reason.
Therefore, support of a partner protects married people from high level of family-work conflict (Holahan & Gibert, 1979a). There are two kinds of spousal support: (a) emotional support and (b) instrumental support (Adams, King & King, 1996). Understanding each other, showing emphathy and love, being thoughtful for the partners’ requirements and giving advices when needed create emotional support among partners. On the other hand, instrumental support is briefly summarized as helping each other in terms of child care and domestic work (Aryee et al., 1999; Burke & Greenglass, 1999). Emotional support increases feelings of satisfactoriness both at home and work while instrumental support decreases load of family responsibilities (Parasuraman et al., 1996).
On the other hand, incompatibility between partner and career planning (Beutell & Greenhaus, 1982), nonadaptive attitudes of people toward partners’ belonged career (Einswirth- Neems & Handal, 1978) and disagreements in their family roles (Chadwick, Albrecht & Kunz, 1976) reduce the impact of spousal support and increase family-work conflict which all should be taken into consideration.
Finally, the study of Aycan and Eskin (2005) in Turkey showed that even in a different culture than Western population which gives more importance to familialism and collectivism is also revealed similar results in terms of the relationship between spousal support and family-work conflict. As a result, spousal support helps people when dealing with family-work conflict (Aycan & Eskin, 2005).

2.3. Individual and Demographic Predictors

Individual and demographic predictors are related to both work-family conflict and family-work conflict (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). One of the individual predictors is Type A personsality disposition. Type A personality is described as being ambitious, persistent, impatient, aggressive and more involved at work (Friedman & Rosenman, 1974). In other words, individuals with Type A personality would give greater importance on work and spend longer hours at workplace (Ganster, 1987). Inevitably, it limits their time on nonwork domains such as family domain (Carlson, 1999). Thus, they tend to experience, especially time-based work-family conflict, due to spending a lot of time at the work (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). Type A behavior is also positively related to strain-based work-family conflict (Carlson, 1999), because excessive working causes strain feelings among individuals (Ivancevich, Matteson, & Preston, 1982). In here, time, energy and attention resources are not enough for two domains (work and family) (Rothbard, 2001). Briefly, different studies supported that Type A personality disposition is positively related to work-family conflict (Burke, Weir & Duwors, 1979; 1980a; Werbel, 1978). On the other side, Type B behavior described as being relaxed, patient and overactivated (Friedman & Rosenman, 1974).
Negative affectivity is another individual predictor which is positively related to work-family conflict (Frone, Russell, & Cooper, 1993). It is a personality trait characterized by experiences of negative mood states which is not impacted by time, place and situations (Watson & Clark, 1984).
Negative affectivity is highly related to neuroticism (George, 1992) and trait anxiety (Schaubroeck, Ganster & Kemmerer, 1996). Thus, individuals who have negative affectivity have more tendencies to experience anxiety, distress and depression and also emotions such as anger, fear, disgust etc. (Watson, Clark & Carey, 1988). In addition, they also tend to experience more stress and strain at workplace (Jex & Spector, 1996).
Negative affectivity has an impact on perception of the environment and effects how people perceive their jobs, their family and work-family conflict (Staw, 1984). Various studies found positive relationship between negative affectivity and all directions of work-family conflict (Carlson, 1999; Frone, Russell and Cooper, 1993; Stoeva, Chiu & Greenhaus, 2002). Findings of Carlson (1999) showed that negative affectivity is mostly related to strain-based work-family conflict.
Lastly, resilience is another individual predictor of work-family conflict. Resilience is about individual’s capacity to survive during or after stressful events and also capacity to adapt the situation which is threatening for individual’s life (Luthar, Cicchetti & Becker, 2000). In a study with married first line nurse managers, resilience was found as it helps nurses to have better work-family balance (Kim & Windsor, 2015). The number of studies examining the relationship between resilience and work-family conflict are few; however it is important to consider the influence of resilience on work-family conflict.
A research which examine demographic predictors on work-family conflict showed weak differences for gender and income (Byron, 2005). However, there are also work-family studies which emphasize gender differences and they found that women experience higher work-family conflict than men (e.g. Duxbury & Higgins, 1991; Grandey & Cropanzano, 1999; Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985; Hall, 1972; Karasek, 1979). Furtermore, studies with employed mothers found that employed mothers experience higher work-family conflict than employed fathers (Byron, 2005; Marshall & Barnett, 1993).
As it was mentioned before, demographic variables such as the number of children in the family and their ages are also related to work-family conflict (Bedeian, Burke & Moffett, 1988). More and younger children take more time and energy of parents (Grandey & Cropanzano, 1999) which leads to work-family conflict (Byron, 2005) and time-based family-work conflict (Hargis, Watt & Piotrowski, 2011).
Like predictors, consequences of work-family conflict are also important to examine in order to briefly understand work-family conflict. There are various negative consequences of work-family conflict which will be discussed in the next section. Before describing those well-known consequences, negative emotions (feelings of regret and guilt) which has been rarely examined outcomes of work-family conflict will be discussed.
In this direction, it is important to examine experiences of negative emotions following work-family conflict for an entire understanding; because understanding these emotional experiences also makes easier to understand work and family life, work-family conflict (Morgan & King, 2012), general health status and psychological well being of individuals (Allen et al., 2000).
Another important point of studying negative emotional experiences following work-family conflict is the limited number of studies about this topic. Significance of the role of emotions in work-family conflict is still unclear; so this subject requires more studies and publications (Bochantin & Cowan, 2016). Briefly, examining emotional experiences following work-family conflict will provide a better understanding of this complex relationship and also valuable information for scientists, practitioners and employers who aim to build a balance between family and work life (Bochantin & Cowan, 2016).

1.2.Work-Family Conflict and Negative Emotions: Regret and Guilt

Most of the studies which examine the relationship between work-family conflict and emotional experiences concentrated on two different emotional experiences, guilt and hostility. These studies were also examined how these emotional experiences effect human’ behavior (e.g. how they trigger antisocial behaviors) (Morgan & King, 2012; Rodell & Judge, 2009). On the other hand, most of the studies were aimed to explain the role of emotional experiences on the relationship between individuals and organizational-relational consequences (Bochantin & Cowan, 2016).
Guilt is defined as ‘‘an individual’s unpleasant emotional state associated with possible objections to his or her actions, inaction, circumstances or intentions’’ (Tangney, 1992, p.199). On the other hand, regret is defined as ‘‘ a more or less painful cognitive and emotional state of feeling sorry for misfortunes, limitations, losses, transgressions, shortcomings or mistakes’’ (Landman, 1993, p.36).
According to more traditional explanations, regret is a cognitive emotion which includes counterfactual thinking process. Counterfactual thinking focuses on (a) finding alternative choices and (b) comparing consequences of choices with alternative consequences. In other words, in order to regret, individuals must think about consequences of their choices and must think what would happen in case that they would make different choice (Gilovich & Medvec, 1995).
Generally, individuals have feelings of regret if they believe the consequences of alternative choices are better than the consequence of chosen option. For example, a person who chooses option A can regret when he/she realizes that option Y would give better results than option A (Zeelenberg, 1999). For example, dying in a plane crash after changing the date of flight is much more tragic than dying in a plane crash without changing the date of flight; because it includes the possibility of the case that the individual could fly in the first reservation date (Gilovich & Medvec, 1995). Individuals integrate their cognitive processes to this entire process by comparing all possibilities together which makes emotion of regret counterfactual emotion (Kahneman & Miller, 1986).
When decision about the responsibility of a choice mostly belongs to the individuals, feelings of regret increases (Burks, 1946; Zeelenberg et al., 1998b). It must be noted that some studies supported the idea that feelings of regret include feelings of responsibility while some studies suggested that feelings of responsibility is not necessary to have feelings of regret (Connolly, Ordóñez & Coughlan, 1997; Landman, 1993).
Thinking about a decision as a mistake, believing existence of lost opportunities, willingness to correct a mistake and taking back given decisions are experiences which individuals have during feelings of regret. Briefly, a wish of a second chance shows up when emotion of regret is dominant (Zeelenberg, 1999).
In 1950s, researchers started to focus on emotion of regret in their studies and came up with the theory called ‘Minimax Regret Principle’. The Principle of Minimax Regret is a theory which determines the maximum level of regret which an individual can experience. According to the theory, emotion of regret is related to decision-making process of individuals (Luce & Raiffa, 1957; Savage, 1951).
In the following years, economic choice theorists (e.g. Loomes & Sugden, 1982) came up with a new theory called Regret Theory. According to the Regret Theory, individuals experience some emotions as a result of their decisions. Regret is an emotion which is experienced as a result of decisions of the individuals (Bell, 1982; Loomes & Sugden, 1982). If consequences of the alternative decisions which was not preferred is better than consequence of the given decision, people would regret. On the contrary, if consequences of alternative decisions are worse than consequence of the given decision, people become pleased (Starmer & Sugden, 1993; Zeelenberg et al., 1998d).
Recent studies about regret claimed another theory called Decision Justification Theory (Connolly & Zeelenberg, 2002). This theory assumed that decision-related regret contains two basic concepts: (a) bad-outcome regret which is related to evaluating outcomes of a decision and (b) self-blame regret which is related to self-blame after making a wrong decision. In both conditions, people experience regret as an emotion. These two conditions of regret do not have to occur together. Even if a decision outcome is good, people can blame themselves and regret about the decision. For example, people who drink and drive, even if they reach to their home safely, would regret if they look behind and think what could have happened. For another example, a mother could think that being vaccinated is a good decision for health of her child; however, there could be some adverse impacts of the vaccine. If the child would suffer from these adverse impacts, the mother could regret as a result of the outcome of her decision (compared to non-vaccination); however, there is no need for the mother to blame herself; since she tries to find out the best solution after long searches. As a summary, the process of drink and drive makes individuals have self-blame regret, worse adverse impacts of the vaccine makes individuals have bad-outcome regret (Connolly & Zeelenberg, 2002).
Kahneman and Tversky (1982) studied about regret to identify whether people are more likely to have feelings of regret as a result of (1) their actions that they did but wish they had not or (2) their inactions that they did not do but wish they had. Researchers found that an active action which has bad consequences makes people regret more than a passive inaction which has bad consequences (see in Kahneman and Tversky, 1982). In the following years, Gilovich and Medvec (1995) also studied the same topic. In addition to the research of Kahneman and Tversky (1982), researchers investigated whether regret experienced as a result of actions or inactions that are related to time. Results showed that actions create feelings of regret more in the short term while inactions create feelings of regret more in the long term (Gilovich & Medvec, 1994; 1995).
Other studies also revealed that regret is an emotion which people experience frequently (Zeelenberg, 1999). Shimanoff (1984) found that regret is a frequent emotion reported in the study of verbal expressions of emotions. According to the study, the word of ‘regret’ is the most frequent spoken word following the word of ‘love’ (Shimanoff, 1984). Briefly, regret is a frequent emotion which makes people think about the outcomes of their decisions, how they could change these outcomes and how they can prevent from wrong decisions in the future (Zeelenberg, 1999).
Lines of emotions are still uncertain and it is hard to process and denominate the emotions (Scherer, 2005). Regret and guilt, embarrassment and shame are emotions which are difficult to distinguish (Sabini & Silver, 1997). In a study of Russell and Mehrabian (1977), people were asked to score different emotional states and as a result, people found regret and guilt as related to each other. Other studies also found this relationship between regret and guilt (Fontaine et al., 2006; Mandel, 2003).
Therefore, regret and guilt are emotions that are associated with each other (Fontaine et al., 2006; Mandel, 2003; Russell & Mehrabian, 1977) and both include feelings of responsibility about a negative outcome of a decision. Main difference between two emotions is related to who is influenced by the negative outcome of the given decision (Berndsen et al., 2004). Regret is an emotion that people experience when people harm themselves , while guilt is experienced when people harm someone else (Ben-Ze’ev, 2000; Berndsen et al., 2004).
Even if regret is related to harming themselves, it can be also experienced when individuals damage the others (Zeelenberg, Van der Pligt & Manstead, 1998b). This kind of regret is quite similar to the feelings of guilt (Gilovich & Medvec, 1995). However, guilt is a conscious emotion experienced in case people judge themselves when they do not behave according to their social norms that are required in their social environment (Tangney, 1992).
Roseman, Wiest and, Swartz (1994) distinguished guilt and regret according to their outcomes, rather than their reasons. Researchers revealed that people who regret would try to avoid their decision or avoid their behavior which leads to regret in order to prevent themselves to feel that emotion. To perform this, people try to behave differently or improve their behaviors in a positive manner (Roseman, Wiest & Swartz, 1994).
People who have feelings of guilt are scared about being alienated by other people. Briefly, guilt mostly focus on other people (external world) while regret mostly focus on inner world (Roseman, Wiest & Swartz, 1994). Being related to the external world feature of guilt was also supported by the other researchers (Baumeister, Stillwell, & Heatherton, 1994; 1995; Tangney, 1991; 1995). According to Tangney (1991, 1995), guilt is experienced as result of critical comparison between one’s behavior and the behavior which is appropriate for social norms. According to Baumeister, Stillwell, & Heatherton (1994) guilt is experienced as a result of assessment of one’s behavior by someone else. For example, one can experience guilt if he forgets to celebrate his mother’s birthday. However, if his mother looks disappointed, feelings of guilt may increase. On the other hand, if his mother tells him it is not important to forget birthday, feelings of guilt may decrease (Berndsen et al., 2004). Contrary to this, since regret is related to inner world, individuals try to tolerate the outcomes of behaviors in their inner world with feelings of regret. For example, if any one receives a rejection from a job application; because of his appearance, he may regret about not dressing in a better way; however, if he does not want to get the job that much, feelings of regret may decrease (Berndsen et al., 2004).
Studies about regret mostly focus on decisions about money and investment plans (e.g. Kahneman & Tversky, 1982) or students’ course selections (e.g. Connolly, Ordóñez & Coughlan, 1987). However, there is lack of study about regret which arises with the decision of becoming mother. One of the precious studies about this topic is Donath’s study (Donath, 2015). Donath (2015) studied qualitatively on distress, conflict, uncertainty and feelings of deprivation that women experience with motherhood. In the study with 23 Israeli mothers who have different professions and educational levels, it was revealed that mothers can regret after having a child (Donath, 2015). Some of the words of the mothers in the study are: ‘‘If today I could go back, obviously I wouldn’t have children. It’s totally obvious to me’’, ‘‘Every time I talk to my friends I tell them that if I had the insights and the experience I have today, I wouldn’t have created even a quarter of a child. The thing that is the most painful for me is that I can’t go back in time. Impossible. Impossible to repair’’ (Donath, 2015, p.354). It is difficult for mothers to express all these words, because the society does not let mothers to think or feel that decision of becoming mother is bad or unlucky decision (Donath, 2015).
Motherhood can bring positive feelings including pleasure, fun and satisfaction (Arendell, 2000); however it can also bring negative feelings such as disappointment, desperation, hostility and unsatisfaction (Beauvoir, [1949] 1993; Rich, 1976). Regret is also an emotion that includes negative feelings (Donath, 2015). It cannot be ignored that feelings of regret of mothers can increase as a result of work-family conflict if mothers participate to work life. As a result, one of the aims of this study is to examine the relationship between family-work conflict and feelings of regret related to ‘the decision of becoming mother’ which employed mothers experience.
Another negative emotion that should be examined is guilt. Although emotions are out of the research area of work-family conflict (MacDermid, Seery & Weiss, 2002), a few studies which examine work-family conflict and emotions together focus on feelings of guilt and hostility (Bochantin & Cowan, 2016). As a result of work- family conflict, feelings of guilt can be experienced by the thought of violation of the social standard (Piotrkowski & Repetti, 1984). Thought of violation of the social standard is formed when gender roles are involved into work-family conflict (Morgan & King, 2012). According to the gender roles in society, women, especially mothers, are expected to be warmer, nurturing (Eagly, Wood & Dieckman, 2000) and take more responsibility on family demands in order to provide a stable family environment (Gutek, Nakamura & Nieva, 1981). In addition, even if these mothers take responsibility on work demands to contribute financial support to home, expectations of family life are still maintained (Gutek, Searle & Klepa, 1991). To satisfy the expectations of family life, mothers take more responsibility on housekeeping (Major, 1993) and child care (Bianchi et al., 2000). These expectations and notion of being a “good mom” are the social concept which is difficult to change in the society (McMahon, 1995). In movies and advertisements effecting society, mothers are shown as a fundamental figure who provides permanence of family life (Kaplan, 1992). Social media also contributed to this intensive mothering, and even argued the idea that mothers’ work life has negative impact on both mothers and children. In this direction, it was suggested that motherhood at home is the best option (Cheal, 1991). There are also many studies which supported daily care of children would be effected negatively when mothers are employed. On the contrary, there are studies which claimed quality of daily care of children is more important; however, unfortunately, the stigmatization of employed mothers and daily care of their children is still maintained (Zimmerman et al., 2008).
Considering all of these, it is not surprising that employed mothers have feelings of guilt (Guendouzi, 2006). Mothers have feelings of guilt when they believe their work life has negative impacts on their family life, especially on their children’ life. For example, mothers may have feelings of guilt, when they have to leave their children to the caregiver in order to go to work. In addition, besides expectations of family life, there are also expectations of work life. These expectations create high demands for time and energy for employed mothers (Bianchi, Robinson & Milkie, 2006). In other words, limited sources with high expectations create work-family conflict on employed mothers (Bianchi, Robinson & Milkie, 2006) Along with work-family conflict, ‘employment related guilt’ is experienced as a result of behaving different than traditional gender role expectations (Borelli et al., 2016).
Unfortunately, because of the traditional mother model in the society, even in this century, it is still hard to deal with the pressure of the society on employed mothers and a lot of mothers are forced to stay at home and raise children, instead of maintaining their work life (Guendouzi, 2006).
Employed mothers have feelings of employment related guilt more than employed fathers; because only mothers think that stability of their family life is prevented by their work life (Gutek, Searle & Klepa, 1991) In society, men and fathers are expected to be independent and assertive (Eagly, Wood & Diekman, 2000) and to have more responsibility on work demands. For example, staying in a workplace for a long time is usual for men and fathers. In additon, they do not have to provide a stable family environment (Gutek, Searle & Klepa, 1991).
Effects of traditional gender roles are not different in Turkey. Turkish women joined to work life by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the Republic of Turkey (Aycan & Eskin, 2005). In today’s Turkey, 31.5 % of Turkish women are in the part of the labour market (TUIK, 2017). However, although Turkish women are in the part of the labour market, they still continue to maintain their traditional gender roles. As a result, employed mothers who live in Turkey also experience work-family conflict more than employed fathers and they also have more feelings of employment related guilt which arise as a result of work-family conflict (Aycan & Eskin, 2005). In conclusion, another aim of this study is to examine the relationship between work-family conflict and feelings of employment related guilt which employed mothers experience.

Sunday, March 11, 2018

Binge eating disorder




Consuming large amounts of food by a sense of loss of control over eating in a discrete period of time named as binge eating disorder (BED). BN and BED comprise binge eating as a core diagnostic feature. BED is frequently endorsed by individuals with AN (namely, those with the binge eating/purging subtype; AN-BE/P). The restraint model of binge eating theorizes that attempts at dietary restriction arising from shape and weight over concern promote binge eating, which in turn leads to a vicious cycle of increased efforts to restrict eating again.

Individuals which have both of BN and BED are especially studied by researches investigating the  relation between dietary restriction and binge eating. Individuals restricting caloric intake or consume meals and snack irregulary are vulnerable to more frequent binge eating episodes according to these studies. However, the relation of caloric restriction and irregular meal patterns with BED is still unkown.

Once a month, you can water flaming katy plant flowers in full sunlight. Then, just make sure that you water your katy in the spring. It needs a little sunlight in order to grow, but not too much. If the plants get too hot or dry, they will die. If they are exposed to dry, they will die. You should also keep them watered regularly.

Saturday, March 10, 2018

Bulimia nervosa




Bulimia Nervosa (BN) includes episodes of binge eating followed by reccurent inappropriate behaviours (such as self-induced vomiting) for preventing weight gain from the caloric overload. To satisfy the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) (2000) criteria, the behavior must be frequent (on average, at least two times per week for 3 months or longer). BN developed in majority of AN patients in progress of time.

In addition to binge eating and purging, individuals with BN frequently report concurrent psychological symptoms such as depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and cognitive eating disorder pathology (e.g., weight and shape concerns) at more severe levels than non-psychiatric controls. Psychological theories suggest that concurrent psychological syptoms are very effective in both the development and maintenance of blumic pathology. In addition, certain psychological symptoms (e.g., greater depressive symptoms and lower self-esteem) may lead to poorer treatment outcomes for adults with BN.

In a study, fixed sized meal were given to individuals with BN  and controls. They are wanted to evaluate their subjective satiety. Indivıiduals with BN reported that they are feeling less full when compared with controls. Furthermore, a potential biological mechanism was identified in BN. This mechanism is associated with cholecystokinin (CCK) which have role in controlling food intake. CCK has an important role in the termination of meal with its post-prandial increasement. The release of  CCK was diminished after a meal in individuals with BN, but not in the control group. This study demonstrated a potential translational link between a biological control mechanism from the gut and clinical symptoms, suggesting that postingestive satiety signals are disturbed in BN. The change in fullness per unit of food consumed was much lower in the individuals with BN, consistent with a disturbance in the development of satiety.

In another study,  the quantity of consumed food and the total amount to be provided were not indicated to participants while they ate showed various results. In contrats to the previous study, the average ratings of fulness of the individuals with BN during the course of the meal were identical to the those of controls. In contrast to the previous study where study participants determined how much they ate and were aware of the quantity of what they had eaten during the course of the meal. According to the results of this study,  the change in fullness per unit of food consumed was quite normal, and therefore did not suggest an impairment in the development of satiety. Notably, in the previous study, subjects were asked specifically to binge eat, suggesting the possibility that a person’s decision to overeat then alters their how they interpret subjective sensations and biological signals resulting from food ingestion.

Friday, March 9, 2018

Anorexia nervosa




Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a psychiatric disease. Energy restriction, low body weight and an intense fear of gaining weight are characteristics of this disease. High emotional and financial burden make AN a devastating and costly disorder for patients and their families. AN can also be lengthy, physically destructive, and psychologically exhausting.

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Book (DSM-IV) lists four criteria for the diagnosis of an AN
(1)  Refusal to maintain body weight at or above a minimally normal weight for age and height
(2)  Intense fear of gaining weight
(3)  Disturbance of one’s body weight or shape
(4)  Amenorrhea

The disorder ranks among the ten leading causes of disability among young women and has one of the highest mortality rates of any psychiatric disorder AN is recognized as the third most common chronic illness in adolescents and the teenage years are the most common time of onset of the disease. The lifetime prevalence of anorexia nervosa in women is 2.2%  but because only 50% of women with AN recover even many years after their initial diagnosis. This is a chronic disease for many women. In fact, the number of women over 35 years of age entering treatment facilities for anorexia nervosa has dramatically increased in recent years. Although primarily recognized in females, males are also affected by this disease. Although it is reported that 10% of individuals affected by AN are male, the incidence may be much higher.

One of the first observational studies in this field on fat avoidance reported  that individuals with AN consumed fewer calories than controls (1289 kcal vs. 2220 kcal) . This low calorie intake primarily caused by fat avoidance of the AN patients.  In that study, the macronutrient composition of caloric intake over a 24-h period was analyzed and it was found that individuals with AN  ate a slightly higher percentage of protein and carbohydrates than controls, but substantially less fat (17.6% vs. 28.4%).

Etiology of AN is unknown. There are determined various and generally nonspecific  psychological and biological risk factors of AN. However, this risk factors do not explain major fraction of the variance in occurance. Treatment for eating disorders in a structured environment usually restores normal weight in 2–4 months, in certain patients, with concomitant physiological, physical and psychological improvement. The fact that full recovery occurs in a substantial fraction of individuals who develop anorexia nervosa and that, despite numerous studies, no major physiological disturbances have been identified that are not reversed by weight gain suggest that cognitive and emotional factors play a major role in the development and persistence of AN.  Pre-meal psychological state may be one such factor by playing an important role in the food choices of individuals with AN. According to recent studies, pre-meal level of anxiety affects calorie intake negatively . Increased distress level might affect food choice function adversely.

Thursday, March 8, 2018

Intuitive eating




Intuitive eating behaviour is based on physiological hunger and satiety cues rather than situational and emotional cues. Its central premise is that individuals innately are able to stay in tune with their bodies' natural signals about hunger and fullness. From this perspective, individuals are thought to be able to regulate their food intake in a healthy manner, eating what they want, when they want it, beginning when they become hungry, and stopping when they feel full. Intuitive eating enables individuals to choose more nutritious foods. For this reason, intuitive eaters prevent weight fluctations and maintain their proper weight. Intuative eating also plays a part in improvement of physical health. It is associated with lower body mass (BMI), cholesterol, blood pressure and decreased cardiovascular risk. In addition, intuative eating is also negatively correlated with chronic dieting and binge eating, which is an important counterproductive effect  in rigid restrained eaters. Intuative eating also causes beneficial outcomes on both psychological and physiological variables slightly. For example, intuitive eaters showed greater unconditional self-regard and body satisfaction (or appreciation) and lower levels of depression and disordered eating behaviors.

Advocates of intuitive eating caution that engaging in restriction of certain foods or limiting portion size can lead individuals to feel deprived, which can then place individuals at risk for experiences of counterregulatory eating in which they violate dietary rules and binge eat . Preventing the influence of environmental factors such as plate and portion sizes is a necessary characteristic which should be comprised by a succesful intuitive  eating behaviour. It is suggested that foods are choosen for the purposes of satisfaction (i.e., taste), health, energy, stamina, and performance in intuitive eating. Preoccupation with food and dichotomization  of foods  as good and bad are prevented by intuative eating. 

Intuative eating influences on various populations differently according to some researchs. For example, elevated awareness to internal cues may differentially relate to eating behaviors among healthy weight individuals, as compared to overweight or obese individuals. Therefore, positive effects of intuative eating on different population and weight classes should investigated. Restraint eating focuses on external and environmentally-based solutions (i.e.limiting calories or portion sizes). However, disordered eating behaviours may occur in this solutions. On the other hand, intuitive eating focuses on internal cues (i.e. increasing awareness and response to hunger and satiety). This internal cues determine hunger and fullness. For this reason, intuative eating appears to be negatively correlated with disordered eating .If intuitive eating works as hypothesized, environmental cues (i.e., plate and portion size) should have less influence on food consumption among individuals who report high levels of intuitive eating, as compared to those who report low levels of intuitive eating. However, it was showed that mindfullness does not provide adequate level of prevention from external variables (plate or portion size effect). For this reason, this situation causes to researchers to suggest that external cue effects may act independently from internal cues. In their current research, Anderson et al. suggested that hungry individuals who report high levels of intuitive eating, as measured by the Intuative Eating Scale (IES), are more likely to eat an objectively larger amount when presented with larger plate and portion sizes, compared to individuals  who report lower levels of intuitive eating.
However, according to them,  it was also possible that particular facets of intuitive eating (i.e., unconditional permission to eat when hungry) influenced participants' eating behaviors in the laboratory which is an environment in which they were given permission to eat as much pasta as they wanted.


Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Hunger




Hunger is the perception of individual’s typical hunger level.  Hunger reflects a person’s stable underlying sensistivity to hunger feelings and predisposition to eat.

Hunger scores  are positively associated with energy intake. Being chronically hunger makes individuals more susceptible to overeating, when compared with individuals do not report being often hungry. Correlations between hunger and disinhibition tend to be high when correlation between hunger and restraint tend to be low. Hunger is common in younger individuals than older individuals. It is also suggested that women might be more aware of their biologic signals of hunger and consequently they are maybe more responsive to their inner cues.

Ghrelin is one of the gastrointestinal hormones with its putative orexigenic function and is mainly produced by gastric cells prior to food intake. Langlois et al. showed that ghrelin is associated with self-reported perception of hunger, independently of anthropometric measures and lifestyle. They reported that in lean people, ghrelin regulates hunger signaling and energy intake. In contrast, increased BMI seems to be associated with lower ghrelin levels and disrupted association between ghrelin levels and hunger feelings.  Also, in their cohort study, obese teenagers had  higher ghrelin levels and reported a greater food intake than their lean counterparts. Therefore, they hypotized that ghrelin could be implicated in early obesity development (childhood and adolescence) by increasing hunger signals and energy intake, but once body weight has reached a certain point, chronically increased ghrelin levels are down-regulated, explaining the observation of lower ghrelin with higher BMI as observed in their cohort and in previous reports in obese adults. 

Although hunger has a homeostatic component, it has also a hedonic part. Overeating is originated from this hedonic part of hunger.  Hedonic hunger favors energy-dense palatable food, rich in sugar and fat, for example snacks, pastries, desserts, baked confectionery and sweets which foods typically ingested in between meals and preferred by women. Regardless of energy status, the anticipation of pleasure causes hedonic eating. The hedonic hunger is constituted by two components, wanting and liking. Wanting represents the anticipation phase, the motivation to eat a food item, and is triggered by cues. Liking is the hedonic reaction of the pleasure experienced through a rewarding orosensory stimuli.

In a study, thylaakoids supplementation reduces feelings of hunger and increases feeling of satiety by affecting subjective ratings of appetite. It also reduces wanting for palatable food. Furthermore, the treatment effect on wanting and liking is correlated to reduction in food intake. In addition, liking for sweet is reduced after consumption. It is suggested that these effects are due to altered secretion of appetite regulating hormones, induced by the thylakoids, affecting reward-related areas in the brain.


Tuesday, March 6, 2018

Disinhibited eating




Lack of ability to inhibit eating is named as disinhibition of eating control or disinhibited eating. Disinhibited eating occurs when an individual is unable to control intake and overeats in response to internal (e.g., emotional stressors) or external (e.g., presence of palatable foods) cues despite his or her intentions not to do so. 
Eating  in response to environmental triggers also existing in disinhibited eating.
However, disinhibited eating also includes social or emotional eating. 

Disinhibition has been repositioned as a psychobiological tendency towards
‘opportunistic eating’. More recently, a high restrained/high disinhibited subtype has been identified as a more reliable risk factor for food consumption after negative affect than restrained eating alone. 

Attitude is an important concept in disinhibited eating field. Attitudes affect opinion of an individual positively or negatively about a certain food. İmplicit attitudes and explicit attitudes are two broad categories of attitudes. Implicit attitudes tend to be automatic in nature, such that individuals are often not consciously aware of them and are hypothesized to form due to associative reasoning. Explicit attitudes are more deliberative in nature and are typically within conscious awareness; they are believed to form through logical processes. This grouping of attitudes is a hallmark of the dualprocess model. 

According to the dual-process model, not only one attitude direct eating behaviour at all situations. Both of them regard towards a food. However, dominant of them direct food choice. For example, someone could have a positive implicit attitude towards chocolate (driven by associations to its immediate hedonic properties) while simultaneously reporting, through explicit attitudes, a lesser liking towards chocolate (driven by associations to its unhealthy attributes). Implicit and explicit attitudes towards food often differ and that, under varying circumstances, one type of attitude tends to be more predictive of eating behavior than the other. When individuals have high cognitive capacity, meaning when there is no distraction or other stimuli to attend to, explicit attitudes are more predictive of food choice. Conversely, when individuals have low cognitive capacity, implicit attitudes will predict food choice. Emotional situations (e.g. after watching an upsetting film) and low inhibitory control (e.g, selfcontrol resources have been depleted, high levels of impulsivity)  also cause implicit attitudes to predict food choice.


Monday, March 5, 2018

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.