128 Dieting
attempts to restrain their food intake at some time in their life. For example,
Horm and Anderson (1993) reported that 40 percent of their sample were
dieting at any time, and Furnham and Greaves (1994) indicated that
87 percent of their sample had dieted at some time. Dieting is also found
in adolescents and girls as young as 9 (Wardle and Beales, 1986; Hill, Oliver,
and Rogers, 1992; Hill, Draper and Stack, 1994). Dieting therefore plays a
central role in the lives of many women. In the late 1970s, a new theory
of eating behavior known as restraint theory emerged, which emphasized
the importance of dieting and suggested that restrained eating (attempting
to eat less) might be a better predictor of food intake than weight per se
(Herman and Mack, 1975; Hibscher and Herman, 1977). Restrained eating
has become increasingly synonymous with dieting, and restraint theory was
developed as a framework to explore this behavior. Restrained eating is meas-
ured using scales such as the Restraint Scale (Herman and Polivy, 1980;
Heatherton et al., 1988), the restrained-eating section of the Dutch Eating
Behaviour Questionnaire (DEBQ; van Strien et al., 1986), and the dietary
restraint section of the Three Factor Eating Questionnaire (Stunkard and
Messick, 1985). These self-report measures ask questions such as “How often
are you dieting?” “How conscious are you of what you are eating?” “Do
you try to eat less at mealtimes than you would like to eat?” and “Do you
take your weight into account with what you eat?” Other research has
categorized dieting into current dieting, a history of dieting, and weight
suppression (French and Jeffrey, 1997).
Some studies inspired by restraint theory suggest that dieters eat the same
as unrestrained eaters (e.g., Sysko et al., 2007) or less than unrestrained
eaters (e.g., Kirkley, Burge, and Ammerman, 1988; Thompson, Palmer, and
Petersen, 1988; Laessle et al., 1989; see later). This finds reflection in the
research on obesity management and the cases of successful weight loss
following dietary interventions (see chapter 8). Most studies following a
restraint theory perspective have argued that although imposing cognitive
restraint on food intake may result in dieters eating less or the same as
nondieters, restraint can also lead to episodes of overeating. Research which
supports restraint theory is considered first, followed by a discussion of
the problems with this perspective.
Restrained eating and overeatingRestraint theory argues that restrained eating results in both under- and
overeating, and the first study illustrating overeating in dieters used a