Double trouble: restrained eaters do not eat less and feel worse

Abstract

Objective: While high levels of dietary restraint do not appear to reflect actual caloric restraint, it has been found to be a risk factor for a wide array of maladaptive eating patterns. These findings raise the question what, if not caloric restriction, dietary restraint entails. We propose that the very finding that restrained eaters do not eat less than they intend to do can provide an answer. Based on this disparity between the intention to restrain oneself and actual behaviour, we therefore hypothesised that high levels of restraint are associated with eating-related guilt.

Method: Three studies (N = 148) using unobtrusive measures of food intake; different restraint scales; and different measures of guilt tested whether restraint is related to eating-related guilt.

Results: Results indicated that restraint was not associated with food intake, but instead was associated with increased levels of guilt after eating. Guilt was explicitly related to food intake. Moreover, the observed guilt could not be attributed to a general increase in negative affect.

Conclusion: The results of these studies suggest that restraint is not an indicator of actual restricted food intake, but rather a reflection concerns about food and eating manifested in eating-related guilt.

Keywords:

• restraint eating
• maladaptive eating patterns
• guilt
• food intake
• dietary restraint

Notes

1. As there is a debate in the restraint literature about what the restraint scales precisely reflect (e.g. Westenhoefer, 1991), we also included another measure of restraint, the restraint subscale of the Dutch eating behaviorqQuestionnaire (DEBQ-R; Van Strien et al., 1986). The DEBQ-R consists of ten items aimed to assess dietary behaviours for weight loss and maintenance. The items (e.g. ‘Do you intentionally eat less to avoid gaining weight?’) are measured on five-point scale ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (very often). The pattern of results that emerged using the DEBQ-R as measure of restraint was similar to that using the RS (Herman & Polivy, 1980) as predictor, suggesting that the results obtained are not an artefact of the particular scale used but related to restraint in general.

2. Similar analyses using the DEBQ-R (α = .92) as measure of restraint showed a similar pattern with restraint not being predictive of caloric intake yet being a significant predictor of guilt, explaining 12.1% of the variance (unadjusted).

3. Similar analyses using a different scale to assess restraint produced similar results: the DEBQ-R (α = .93) did not predict food intake, but was a significant predictor of eating-related guilt, explaining 28.5% (unadjusted) of the variance.