“I will fast … tomorrow”: Intentions to restrict eating and actual restriction in daily life and their person-level predictors

Abstract

Objective. Dietary restraint is a common, yet controversial practice to tackle overweight. Yet, despite good intentions to reduce food intake, most restraint-based diets fail to produce long term weight loss. A better understanding of the naturalistic course of daily dieting intentions and their effectiveness in guiding subsequent eating behavior are therefore needed. Method. In two studies, participants (n=49 and n=59) reported both their state intention to restrict eating on the next day, as well as their actual restriction on that day via smartphone-based evening reports of 12 and 10 days, respectively. Intention-behavior gap scores were calculated as differences between intention at t1 (e.g. evening intention Monday for restriction Tuesday) and restriction at t2 (evening report of actual restraint on Tuesday). Restriction-related trait questionnaires served as predictors of general intention or restriction level, whereas several traitlevel disinhibiting eating style questionnaires served as predictors for intention-behavior gaps (difference scores). Results. Daily intentions to restrict were rated higher than the daily actual restrictive behavior. Participants with higher scores on restriction-related questionnaires (restrained eating, dieting, reversed intuitive eating) showed higher levels of daily state intention and restriction. Larger state intention-behavior gaps, by contrast, were seen in participants scoring high on trait-level disinhibiting eating styles (emotional eating, stress eating and food craving). Discussion. The results point to potential risk factors of diet failure in everyday life: emotional, stress eating, and food craving are disinhibiting traits that seem to increase intention-behavior gaps. These findings can inform individualized weight-loss interventions: individuals with disinhibiting traits might need additional guidance to avoid potentially frustrating diet failures.

Does stress eat away at you or make you eat? EMA measures of stress predict day to day food craving and perceived food intake as a function of trait stress-eating

“…The current results might extend this finding in suggesting that the tendency of high stress eaters to increase their food intake on stressful days might in the long-term facilitate weight gain and a higher BMI, pointing to a state-trait interaction. Further corroborating this, recent research showed that SSES scores are related to intentionbehaviour-gaps with regard to restriction (Reichenberger et al, 2019): Participants with higher SSES scores exhibited higher intention-behaviour gaps in daily life in that they were more prone to report a higher intention to restrict compared to the actual restrictive behaviour. However, pathways towards BMI increase remain speculative unless examined longitudinally.…”

Consumer Understanding of Food Quality, Healthiness, and Environmental Impact: A Cross-National Perspective

“…The latter assumption seemed to be supported by consumers' answers to the question about attention assigned to food quality (higher for Romanians). However, it should be considered that other factors besides interest (attention) intervene in explaining the use frequency of quality cues, similarly to the case of the intention-behavior gap for various food related behaviors [117,118].…”

Twenty Years of the Food Cravings Questionnaires: a Comprehensive Review

“…Moreover, FCQ-T-r scores moderated the relationship between craving for and consumption of these foods in that experiencing a craving more likely translated into consumption of snack foods in individuals with high FCQ-T-r scores than in those with low scores [3]. Scores on the FCQ-T-r also predicted a higher intentionbehavior gap in daily life as measured with ecological momentary assessment: those with higher FCQ-T-r scores were less likely to actually restrict their eating behavior on a given day when they intended to do so on the previous day [90]. Finallysimilar to the FCQ-T-discriminant validity is supported in that scores on the FCQ-T-r were unrelated to length of food deprivation (i.e., the time since the last meal [55,58]).…”