Measuring Dietary Restraint Status: Comparisons between the Dietary Intent Scale and the Restraint Scale.

The measurement of young women's self-reported dietary restraint status is complex. Compared to Herman and Polivy's commonly utilized Restraint Scale (RS), Stice's Dietary Intent Scale (DIS) is less understood. Because the DIS is becoming a popular research tool, it is important to understand how this scale compares to more traditional measures of restraint.

Perceived stress and freshman weight change: the moderating role of baseline body mass index.

The transition from high-school to university is a critical period of weight change. Popular media suggest that freshman students gain 15 lb (6.80 kg) of body weight during their first year at university (i.

Associating a prototypical forbidden food item with guilt or celebration: relationships with indicators of (un)healthy eating and the moderating role of stress and depressive symptoms.

The increase in obesity and the many educational messages prompting us to eat a healthy diet have heightened people's concerns about the effects of food choice on health and weight. An unintended side effect may be that such awareness fuels feelings of guilt and worry about food. Although guilt has the potential to motivate behaviour change, it may also lead to feelings of helplessness and loss of control.

Focusing on media body ideal images triggers food intake among restrained eaters: a test of restraint theory and the elaboration likelihood model.

Although research consistently shows that images of thin women in the media (media body ideals) affect women negatively (e.g., increased weight dissatisfaction and food intake), this effect is less clear among restrained eaters.

Chocolate cake. Guilt or celebration? Associations with healthy eating attitudes, perceived behavioural control, intentions and weight-loss.

Food and eating are often associated with ambivalent feelings: pleasure and enjoyment, but also worry and guilt. Guilt has the potential to motivate behaviour change, but may also lead to feelings of helplessness and loss of control. This study firstly examined whether a default association of either 'guilt' or 'celebration' with a prototypical forbidden food item (chocolate cake) was related to differences in attitudes, perceived behavioural control, and intentions in relation to healthy eating, and secondly whether the default association was related to weight change over an 18month period (and short term weight-loss in a subsample of participants with a weight-loss goal).

Positive fantasies or negative contrasts: the effect of media body ideals on restrained eaters' mood, weight satisfaction, and food intake.

Although viewing media body ideals promotes body dissatisfaction and problematic eating among women (e.g., extreme restraint/overeating), some argue that women only report such negative effects because they think that they are meant to (i.

Preliminary support for links between media body ideal insecurity and women's shoe and handbag purchases.

Two studies examined the relationship between women's insecurity-arousing comparisons with female models and shoe/handbag ownership. Idealized media images appear capable of threatening some women's sense of attractiveness and it may be that as a result, accessorizing becomes particularly appealing because it helps increase physical attractiveness without drawing attention to one's figure, the object of the threatening comparisons. In Study 1 (N=922), a correlational study, the more women reported that they feel insecure when they see attractive female models, the more shoes they tended to own.

Emotional eating and its effect on eating behaviour after a natural disaster.

Emotional eaters are hypothesised to overeat in response to negative emotions or stress. However, the empirical evidence for such a moderating role is mixed. This study examined the effect of emotional eating on eating behaviour before and after the occurrence of a natural disaster (an earthquake) in a sample of predominantly middle-aged and older women.