The Psychology of Eating: From Healthy to Disordered Behavior

Dieting 139

showed an inability to concentrate, with mood changes such as depression
and apathy being common. At the end of the period of dieting, the men were
allowed to eat freely and often ate continuously, reporting loss of control
over their eating behavior sometimes resulting in binge eating. The authors
concluded that these effects were probably due to the restriction of their
diet. In a similar vein, Polivy et al. (1994) explored the eating behavior of
World War II combat veterans and former prisoners of war. The authors
concluded that postwar binge eating was rare in the combat veterans but
significantly more common in the prisoners who had suffered massive weight
loss in camps during the war.
To examine the effects of dieting without extreme weight loss, Warren
and Cooper (1988) investigated the effects of a short period of dieting on
both mood and self-control over eating. They placed 14 men and women
on a calorie-restricted diet (1,200 kcal per day for women and 1,500 kcal
per day for men) for 2 weeks and monitored daily changes in psychological
state using visual analogue scales. Like Keys et al. (1950), they found
significant increases in feelings of loss of control of eating and increases
in preoccupation with food, but there was no effect on any of the mood
ratings, possibly due to the short duration of the study. The interpretation
of the results of these studies is limited by the absence of nonrestricting

denial

self-awareness

physiological

boundaries

high-risk

situations

loss of control

internal

attributions

cognitive shifts

mood modification

Dieting Overeating

Figure 7.7 From dieting to overeating.