Scoring
This scale was developed by researchers
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and has been used in many studies that examine people’s eating habits. To help make sure you didn’t bias your results based on what you thought you
should
respond, the questions were set up so that agreeing with some indicated that you were a restrained eater and agreeing with others indicated the opposite.
For the following questions, copy your response into the scoring column: 1, 4, 6, 10, 12, 13, 25, 27. (In other words, if you chose “1” [strongly disagree], copy the “1” into the scoring column; if you chose “2,” copy the “2”; etc.) Now, go back and reverse score the following questions: 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26. Here’s what I mean by reverse score: If you chose “1,” give yourself a “5,” etc. (1=5, 2=4, 3=3, 4=2, 5=1).
Low scores in the score column (1 or 2) indicate attitudes of a restrained eater, and help you to identify areas for potential growth. This book is going to help you become an unrestrained eater, moving more toward higher scores of 4 or 5.
Restrained Eating: Danger, Danger!
What’s the danger in restrained eating habits? If you are a restrained eater, you try to control your body weight and don’t trust your body to do it for you. You’re likely to be gaining weight or—at the very least—frustrated in your efforts to lose.
Why? Because attempts to control your food intake through willpower and control require that you drown out the internal signals, leaving you much more vulnerable to external signals. This approach is a problem because unless you lock yourself in a closet, there’s no way to control the constant exposure to food we face in our world. Food or food images are
everywhere.
Food companies are the second largest advertisers in the U.S. economy (trailing only automobile manufacturers).
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Drive by a fast-food restaurant and the smell of frying meat and potatoes suddenly makes you ravenous; see a commercial for pizza and before you know it your fingers are speed-dialing Pizza Hut; whether you’re hungry or not, dieting or not, you suddenly have to eat.
But if you’re an unrestrained eater, those cues don’t faze you. Sure the pizza smells good, but one piece may be enough; if your needs are met, you lose your desire for more. Meanwhile, the restrained eater is already on her fourth piece.
Check out the research to see how this plays out. Say you’ve just had a fabulous dinner at one of the top restaurants in town. It’s dessert time, but you’re really full. Nonetheless, the waitress insists on handing you a dessert menu, or describes in glowing terms the apple tart she’s sure you’ll love, or brings the dessert tray around to
show
you the tempting pastries. When researchers tested these scenarios with real people,
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they found that unrestrained eaters were much less likely to order dessert regardless of what type of persuasion the waitress tried, while restrained eaters were much more likely to order dessert if they heard about it or saw it.
This research plays into the issue of dieting, too. In one study, women were told they were going to rate the quality of certain foods.
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Some women got a milkshake followed by three bowls of ice cream; some just got the ice cream. The restrained eaters who
didn’t
get the milkshake ate very little of the ice cream (trying to be “good”), but those who drank the milkshake also ate most of the ice cream. (The “what the hell” effect
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. . . i.e., “I drank the milkshake, I ruined my diet, what the hell, I’ll eat the ice cream, too.”) The idea that there will be a restriction in the future paradoxically motivated these women to act counter to their internal restriction, “to get it while I can.”
Overall, more than seventy-five studies have been conducted to examine the effects of various situations that disturb the restrained eater’s self-control. The results are consistent: Restrained eaters react to emotions and external cues in a nearly totally opposite manner of unrestrained eaters.
Emotions such as depression, anxiety, anger, fear, and excitement or disinhibitors, such as alcohol, cause a restrained eater to overeat. Conversely, they turn off the appetite of an unrestrained eater. As long as things go well, the restrained eater can maintain control. But if anything gets in the way or changes, she can’t maintain that control. The reason is clear: Restrained eaters don’t rely on the normal signals of fullness to regulate their eating, so there are no brakes in place.
Also disturbing: Restrained eaters burn fewer calories after a meal than unrestrained eaters, and more of the calories they burn come from carbohydrates as opposed to fat.
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Becoming an Unrestrained Eater
I hear you, I hear you. You want to know how you can become an unrestrained eater. Be patient: Chapter 9 will guide you in learning how to “hear” your body’s signals of hunger and fullness and finding new ways to address those emotional issues that once drove you to the refrigerator. The next few chapters help you understand the stumbling blocks, how you got here, and why your setpoint dial is set where it is.
THREE
We Resist Weight Loss
A
re you still looking for the right diet or exercise plan to help you permanently lose weight? It may be hard to believe that there just isn’t scientific evidence to support
any
theory of how to lose weight and keep it off. No matter how many times or how authoritatively the message is repeated that diet, exercise, and discipline can get you what you want, it doesn’t change the fact that it has not proven true for any but a tiny minority of people.
This chapter examines why dieting backfires, why exercise fails to deliver on its weight-loss promises, and how sleep habits and how you manage stress complicate weight regulation. It also details a few other surprising environmental factors that contribute to your weight. And before you go looking for a shortcut to weight loss, be sure to read the discussion on pills and bariatric (weight-loss) surgery.
If you are focused on weight loss, you may be hesitant to read this chapter. After all, believing in these techniques provides the conviction to suffer through that diet or exercise plan. You may be concerned that losing faith in weight loss is tantamount to giving up, condemning you to being forever disappointed, stuck in a body you don’t want. Why read this chapter?
Because first you need to understand that failed weight-loss attempts aren’t your fault. Lightening up on the self-blame will make you more effective at achieving what
is
possible.
In Greek legend, the gods condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly roll a rock to the top of a mountain, where it would tumble to the bottom, forcing him to start uphill again. Sisyphus’s efforts are not unlike the weight-loss cycle of dieting, regaining, and dieting again that many of us have experienced firsthand. Or the New Year’s resolutions to exercise regularly, which are quickly abandoned when weight-loss goals are not accomplished, only to be tried again the following year.
Why subject yourself to such a tragic fate? Who wants to be stuck interminably repeating the same painful task if it doesn’t accomplish what you want and serves no useful purpose?
My wish is that this chapter will provide you with a sense of relief and renewed hope. The fact that your body can so powerfully resist weight loss is a sign that it
can
control your weight, much better than you can—meaning you don’t have to fight your desires through conscious control. There is no need to watch your food intake or force yourself to “work out.”
Imagine that. You can enjoy eating and moving your body. No more rice cakes when you really want that buttery biscuit, no more bicycling to nowhere as punishment when you do indulge. Future chapters support you in learning just how to trust and honor the weight-regulation system that is packaged inside you.
Putting Calories into Perspective
You may already know this plain fact: Weight loss is simply a matter of taking in fewer calories
b
than you spend. Conventional weightloss ideology exploits this fact, prompting you to diet (reduce calorie intake) or exercise (increase calories spent). On the surface, this seems logical.
The problem is it doesn’t work—at least not in a lasting way. All you folks who have dieted or exercised with gusto, only to regain the weight, listen up! You did not fail to keep the weight off because you are lazy, weak, or undisciplined. It’s not because you didn’t want it badly enough. You regained that weight
because the contributors to your body weight, such as what, when, and how much you eat, as well as how you expend energy (including your inclination to move), are not completely under conscious control
.
Sure, on a short-term basis you can do a pretty good job of manipulating your food or exercise habits—and that’s why short-term weight loss is relatively easy. On a long-term basis, however, your body can undermine your best efforts to control your weight.
What Are Calories Really
Calories are a measure of energy. Energy is a difficult term to understand as it takes on such different forms. To put energy in perspective, if you could harness food energy and put it to work, there is sufficient energy in five pounds of spaghetti to brew a pot of coffee. Or you could light a 60-watt bulb for ninety minutes with a piece of pie.
The energy contained in 2,000 calories is just about enough to fuel everything I like to accomplish in a day, but it might exceed someone else’s ability to make use of it. The unused energy gets stored on his or her body and shows up as weight gain on the scale. For another person, those same 2,000 calories may not be enough to fuel his or her activities, and his or her body has to take some energy out of storage. His or her scale registers weight loss.
My Hypothalamus Made Me Do It
Do you think you can choose to eat or not, or skip dessert? The extent to which we have free will when it comes to eating—and even moving—is a lot more complicated than commonly believed. Sure, you can make choices at an individual meal. Likewise, the motivation to show up for your running buddy may override your temptation to hit the snooze button and go back to sleep.
But here’s what’s confusing. Weight-regulation mechanisms act over the course of weeks, months, or years, not meal to meal, nor do they dictate daily decisions to exercise. Over the long run, you just don’t have that kind of control. Biology lurks behind the urge to eventually cheat on your diet or to go back to sleep.
This is how it works. As discussed in chapter one, a section of your brain, most notably your hypothalamus, helps regulate your weight. It accomplishes this regulation through many different mechanisms, such as sending out chemical messengers that control the rate at which you burn energy. Conceptually, it probably makes sense to most people that the body controls unconscious processes like this.
What’s harder to understand is that signals from the hypothalamus also regulate conscious behaviors, such as eating, by increasing or decreasing the appetite. Those unconscious signals influence how appealing food is to you, contributing to actions such as ordering a pizza or having a second piece of pie. Just because an action is conscious and requires your complicity doesn’t mean that all aspects of it are voluntary.
Sometimes your hypothalamus might just be giving you a little nudge, saying I’m hungry, feed me, and boy those corn chips look tempting. But you can resist with a strong will to lose weight. Yes, you are in control. You can conquer hunger. Willpower works—short term.
But other times the deck is stacked against you so strongly that it’s way too hard to “just say no.” Those chips are so compelling that you can’t resist.
Always remember this.
It’s not your fault!
Biology is so powerful it can “make” you break that diet.
A rare few individuals can muster up an extraordinary amount of willpower to conquer even the most intense hunger drive. Think of the political conviction of someone on an extended hunger strike. Careers in the public eye, like modeling or acting, which require individuals to maintain a certain body type, can also sometimes provide enough incentive for people to “just say no.” But I don’t recommend you try, as your body doesn’t give up without a good fight.
When your body can’t get you to comply with its demand to break your diet, it asserts even more control by toning down certain metabolic processes. As a result, people who do succeed at conquering the drive to eat are miserable. Experimentally underfed people experience lower energy levels, apathy, dizziness, intolerance to cold, slower metabolism, preoccupation with food, intense hunger and cravings, decreased sex drive, general irritability, and depression, among other characteristics .
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Not a pretty picture—though incredibly effective at helping you conserve body energy. In today’s context, it may not be so reassuring to know that you’re well equipped to survive food shortages. But this survival instinct sure was a valuable trait in the past!