Anyone catch Dateline last night?

They featured a psychologist who has studied "dieters" for the past 30 years. She found some interesting trends regarding why people go off-plan.

1. Peer Influence
In the Dateline experiment, people took cues about when to stop eating from people nearby. If the person next to them continued to eat, so did they. If the person stopped after a few bites, so did they. If they took seconds and thirds, so did they.

2. All or Nothing Thinking
The dieters who had already filled up on a fattening food, continued to eat cookies, because they thought they had already fallen off the wagon - so what the heck. The non-dieters did not eat as many cookies.

3. Stress
The subjects completed a timed test that was made to make them feel dumb. The dieters ate more cookies after the test than the non-dieters.

It's interesting that they also compared the results of people who considered themselved to be dieters, and against those who did not consider themselves dieters.

Overall, the self-described dieters, were more easily susceptible to pyschological cues.

What do you all think about these trends?

I agree with Jen. We have to stop thinking as if we were on a "diet". We need to start accepting that there is no "quick-fix" and then go back to our unhealthy eating habits.

From now on, YOU WILL NO LONGER DIET, just think of yourself as a healthy eater.

Everyone say it with me "I'm a healthy eater, I'm a healthy eater..."

Lisa

Really interesting. Maybe thinking of yourself as a "dieter" is the real problem.

The peer influence one is interesting. I've seen it in action and done it myself. A lot of the things that we do are really designed to help us fit in, since we're social animals. I think that "dieting" might be just another way to try to fit in -- we think other people expect it of us and may be just trying to please them rather than achieve our own goals.