ARE YOU able to walk past a tray of doughnuts without giving in to temptation? If not, you may have a high disinhibiton score, a measure linked to weight gain and reduced success when trying to lose weight.
People with a tendency to “see food and eat it” are more likely to be overweight and struggle with losing weight whether they try dieting, exercise or even surgical interventions.
Dr Eleanor Bryant at the University of Bradford, England, believes this is because current weight loss methods “ignore the psychology of weight gain and weight loss”. She was speaking yesterday during a session at the ongoing British Science Association meeting in Bradford.
Her research found that by taking the psychology of weight loss into account, snacking behaviour was successfully reduced. Dr Bryant’s approach targeted the characteristics of high disinhibition, particularly comfort eating and learning to recognise internal signs of hunger and fullness.
People with high disinhibition take “more pleasure in food” and are more likely to “eat themselves happy”, says Dr Bryant. They will seek out fatty or high sugar foods, have increased alcohol intake and are more likely to smoke.
Pleasure-related eating affects our control over body weight and so can lead to low self-esteem and poor psychological health. This in turn can hinder attempts at weight loss, creating a cycle of weight gain and comfort eating that “threatens health and wellbeing”.
Disinhibition is not just about personal control, Dr Bryant adds. Studies have shown it may have a genetic basis and be due to “vulnerabilities in biology as well as psychological traits”. These vulnerabilities include the way the appetite responds to hunger and is perhaps linked to our ancient past when food was scarce. In those situations it would have been beneficial to eat foods high in fat and keep activity to a minimum. For most of us living today, however, food is no longer scarce and this archaic response is no longer helpful.
Dr Bryant thinks a “mindfulness intervention” incorporated into weight-loss schemes could help to address these issues associated with weight gain and disinhibition.
Disinhibition is measured by the answers people give on a questionnaire. It is scored between zero and 16. Anybody with a score above 10 is classed as having high disinhibition and is likely to be obese. At the opposite end of the scale, people scoring near zero demonstrate “restraint” behaviour.
The studies have been mainly on adults, but Dr Bryant plans to extend her work into children.