454 CHAPTER 10
to control food intake, weight, and shape fail, self-esteem falls even lower; these
people feel they’ve failed, yet again, to achieve something they wanted.Dieting, Restrained Eating, and Disinhibited Eating
Frequently restricting the intake of specifi c foods—such as “fattening” foods—or
overall caloric intake (as when dieting or trying to maintain one’s current weight)
is referred to as restrained eating. If you’ve ever been on some type of diet, you
know that continuing to adhere to such restrictions can be challenging. And at
times the diet may feel so constraining that you get discouraged and frustrated, and
simply give up—which can lead to a bout of disinhibited eating, bingeing on a re-
stricted type of food or simply eating more of a nonrestricted type of food (Polivy &
Herman, 1985). In fact, it is common for dieters, and people with eating disorders,
to alternate restrictive eating with disinhibited eating (Fairburn et al., 2005; Polivy
& Herman, 1993, 2002).
In addition to dieting, researchers have identifi ed other stimuli that may trigger
disinhibited eating. One stimulus is eating more calories than intended or desired,
which can trigger the abstinence violation effect. Seemingly paradoxically, disinhib-
ited eating can also be triggered by an upcoming diet. This phenomenon is known
as the last supper effect (Eldredge, Agras, & Arnow, 1994) and is sometimes re-
ferred to as “diet tomorrow, feast today” because it leads people to increase their
food intake before starting a diet.
To study the last supper effect, researchers examined whether
anticipation of a week-long diet would lead a group of restrained
eaters (those with a signifi cant history of
failed attempts at dieting) to consume
more than a group of restrained eaters
not anticipating a diet (Urbszat, Herman,
& Polivy, 2002). Volunteers (some of
whom were restrained eaters, and some
of whom were not) were assigned either
to a group that would be on a low-fat
diet for a week or to a group that would
have no change in food intake. The par-
ticipants were then asked to eat cookies
from a plate and rate their taste; after
they’d made their ratings, participants
were allowed to fi nish the cookies on the
plate if they wanted. As shown in Figure
10.3, results were consistent with the last supper effect: Restrained eaters who were
anticipating the low-fat diet ate more cookies than did either their restrained coun-
terparts not anticipating the diet or unrestrained eaters in either condition.
Restrained eaters can also become insensitive to internal cues of hunger and
fullness. In order to maintain restricted eating, they may stop eating before they get
a normal feeling of fullness and so end up trying to tune out sensations of hunger.
If they binge, they may eat past the point of normal fullness. They therefore need to
rely on external guides, such as portion size or elapsed time since their last meal, to
control their food intake (Polivy & Herman, 1993). However, using external guides
to direct food intake requires cognitive effort—to monitor the clock or to calculate
how much food was last eaten and how much food should be eaten next—and
when a person is thinking about other tasks (such as a job or homework assign-
ment), he or she may temporarily stop using external guides and simply eat, which
in turn may lead to disinhibited or binge eating (Baumeister et al., 1998; Kahan,
Polivy, & Herman, 2003). In fact, the results of one study showed that restrained
eaters ate more when they were asked to inhibit their emotional responses to a
video clip (which required them to increase their cognitive effort) than when they
did not inhibit their emotional responses (Vohs & Heatherton, 2000).10.3 • The Last Supper Effect
Restrained eaters who were about
to diet ate more than did restrained
eaters who were not about to diet.
Unrestrained eaters ate comparable
amounts, regardless of whether those
participants were about to diet.
Source: Adapted from Urbszat, Herman, &
Polivy, 2000.Restrained eating
Restricting intake of specifi c foods or overall
number of calories.
Figure 10.3g3Unrestrained Restrained010203040506070Status of eatersAverage food intake (grams)No diet
Diet