Reducing fat intake using implementation intentions: A meta‐analytic review

Abstract

Previous research was sceptical of the efficacy of planning in the case of avoiding goals in healthy eating. However, our results show that planning is an efficient intervention that can be used by health education programmes to reduce fat intake and, therefore, increase citizen well-being. These results also support the existence of a key variable in the implementation intentions process, that is, goal complexity, and the presence of two moderating variables, that is, gender and monitoring. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Implementation intentions are action plans subordinate to goal intentions that specify the 'when, where, and how' of responses leading to goal attainment. In healthy eating, the average effect of forming implementation intentions is small to medium, but this efficacy changes depending on the type of intended behaviour. Past evidence shows that the effect size seems to be lower when the intervention aims at reducing unhealthy behaviours versus promoting healthy behaviours. What does this study add? Forming implementation intentions is an efficient intervention to reduce fat intake with a medium overall effect. The efficacy of this intervention is increased when men are targeted and when there is no monitoring during the process. This study introduces a new line of research focused on the study of the effect of planning on complex goals.

Implicit process interventions in eating behaviour: a meta-analysis examining mediators and moderators

“…The effect sizes found here are similar to those of a previous meta-analysis which examined the effects of a wide range of dietary intervention studies (Michie et al, 2009), and slightly smaller than those reported in other meta-analyses which specifically examined the effects of implementation intentions on reducing fat intake (Vilà, Carrero, & Redondo, 2017) and reducing unhealthy eating patterns (Adriaanse, Vinkers, De Ridder, Hox, & De Wit, 2011). These studies are comparable to many studies testing implicit bias interventions as they typically deliver interventions in single sessions with short or non-existent follow-up periods and do not allow for any statements about longer-lasting behavioural effects (with Veling et al's (2014) being a notable exception).…”

Individual differences in if-then planning: Insights from the development and application of the If-Then Planning Scale (ITPS)

“…for the goal to eat healthy). Meta-analytic evidence covering hundreds of laboratory and field experiments using implementation intention interventions suggests that prompting people to engage in if-then planning for a specific goal facilitates its attainment (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006), with examples ranging from eating a healthier diet (Adriaanse et al, 2011;Vilà et al, 2017), being more physically active (Bélanger-Gravel et al, 2013;Silva et al, 2018), to ceasing addictions (Cooke & Lowe, 2016;McWilliams et al, 2019). In stark contrast to this profound research interest, little attention has been paid to the question of whether there are individual differences in using if-then plans as a self-regulation strategy.…”

Randomized trial of planning tools to reduce unhealthy snacking: Implications for health literacy

“…A key candidate action plan strategy is ‘implementation intentions.’ This strategy guides individuals to specify the critical cues to carry out a behavioral response, often presented as an ‘if-then’ plan (for example, “If [cue] occurs, then carry out [behavioral response]”) [6, 29]. Systematic reviews have indicated that these are effective at improving a range of lifestyle behaviors in the general population [30–32]. They may also be particularly useful for people with lower health literacy as some have argued that less cognitive effort is needed to carry out these plans [33–36].…”