The psychology of dieting

Keeping Healthy this Autumn

Date: October 2008
Author: Sam Silvester

What you eat obviously makes an enormous difference to your weight, but how you think about food plays a very important part too. There seems to be psychological difference between dieters and non-dieters. In dieters, the normal regulation of food intake become undermined as normal appetite and hunger cues are ignored. This leads to periods of restraint and starvation, followed by overindulgence and guilt, followed by restraint.

Dieters usually live by a set of rules centred around allowed foods and banned or naughty foods. Weight worriers tend lack appetite control and will either ignore hunger cues, or eat when not hungry because it is time to.

We are all different shapes and sizes, and whilst no one is meant to be obese, neither are we all meant to be the shape of models portrayed by the media, who often achieve that shape by extreme measures or airbrushing.

We are meant to have a more active lifestyle than modern day allows. In the days before the industrial revolution, most men and women had very physical jobs, even those who stayed at home. Even further back, our cave dwelling ancestors were far more active and ate less food. To compensate for our more sedentary lives, we need less calories, which means less on our plates, less high sugar and high fat junk, less snacks and a lot more exercise.

If we eat sensibility following a balanced and natural diet, and eat when we are hungry, our own bodies will tell us how much we need.