How affective and instrumental physical activity outcomes are associated with motivation, intentions, and engagement in subsequent behavior.

Physical activity (PA) produces various outcomes, including affective responses and instrumental benefits (e.g., weight loss, health).

The Self-Control of Eating.

Many individuals struggle to regulate their own consumption of food. Beginning with general theories of self-control, we review psychological factors that have been shown to influence the regulation of eating, including those related to particular personality variables, such as external eating, restrained eating, and reward sensitivity, as well as situational constraints, including normative influences, emotions, and calorie deprivation. Strategies for the self-control of eating, including reappraisal, effortful inhibition, and various automatic strategies are also reviewed, along with a discussion of the strengths and limitations of historical and contemporary psychological studies investigating food consumption.

The role of social norms, intergroup contact, and ingroup favoritism in weight stigma.

Although average body size in the U.S. has increased in recent decades, stigma directed at individuals with higher weight has not diminished.

Consequences of receiving weight-related advice from a healthcare provider: Understanding the varied experiences of people with higher weight.

Healthcare providers regularly give weight-related advice (e.g., behavioral weight loss counseling) to patients with higher weight (BMI ≥30 kg/m).

Taming the white bear: Lowering reactance pressures enhances thought suppression.

Individuals fail to suppress certain thoughts, especially under conditions that tax cognitive resources. We investigated the impact of modifying psychological reactance pressures on thought suppression attempts. Participants were asked to suppress thoughts of a target item under standard experimental conditions or under conditions designed to lower reactance pressures.

Norms and attributions about weight gain during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Weight gain was common during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, potentially creating a new descriptive norm about weight gain. The unique context of a global pandemic may have influenced situational attributions for weight gain that were not typical prior to the pandemic. We examined the effects of the new norm on people's views about responsibility and blame for weight gain.

Control Yourself: Broad Implications of Narrowed Attention.

Attention represents a key element of self-control, and multiple theoretical accounts have highlighted the role played by abundant attentional capacity in effecting successful self-regulation. What, then, are the consequences of living in today's world, in which attention can become so easily divided by a multitude of stimuli? In this article, we consider the implications of divided attention for self-control and show that although the end result is typically disinhibited behavior, under specified conditions, attentional limitation, or what we term , can be associated with enhanced restraint.

Calorie deprivation impairs the self-control of eating, but not of other behaviors.

Objective: Sustained weight loss is difficult to achieve, and weight regain is common due to biological and psychological changes caused by calorie deprivation. These changes are thought to undermine weight loss efforts by making self-control more difficult. However, there is a lack of evidence showing a causal relationship between calorie deprivation and behavioral self-control.

Eating up cognitive resources: Does attentional consumption lead to food consumption?

What is the role played by attentional load in eating? Does attending to an unrelated task generally lead to overeating, perhaps by preventing individuals from focusing on a goal to limit consumption? Or does such attentional diversion typically lead to reductions in eating, perhaps by preventing people from noticing tempting features of relevant food cues? Past research has supported each of these two propositions, but comparisons between existing studies have been hampered to the extent that various experimental manipulations differ in the degree to which they occupy attention, as well as differing in the particular type of attentional resources they exploit. To resolve existing discrepancies in the literature, in a series of studies, we made use of a working memory manipulation, the n-back task (Kirchner, 1958), that can be systematically modified to induce varying levels of cognitive load, allowing for rigorous comparisons of the effects of different levels of attentional load on eating. These studies revealed a complex pattern of results.

Variety Salience and Enjoyment of Repetitiously Consumed Foods: a Field Experiment.

Background: The formation of healthy eating habits is supported by repeatedly eating specific foods, but repetition can also reduce enjoyment of those foods. Making the variety in one's diet salient increases enjoyment of repetitiously consumed foods in a lab setting. Therefore, in a longitudinal field experiment, we tested a brief intervention to remind participants of the variety in their diet.

An in-home intervention of parent-implemented strategies to increase child vegetable intake: results from a non-randomized cluster-allocated community trial.

Background: Less than 2% of children in the U.S., ages 9-13, meet the minimum dietary recommendations for vegetable intake.

Impacts of a Vegetable Cooking Skills Program Among Low-Income Parents and Children.

Objective: To evaluate the impact of a vegetable-focused cooking skills and nutrition program on parent and child psychosocial measures, vegetable liking, variety, and home availability.

Design: Baseline and postcourse surveys collected 1-week after the course.

Setting: Low-income communities in Minneapolis-St Paul.

Reducing sugar use in coffee while maintaining enjoyment: A randomized controlled trial.

Consuming coffee without (or with less) sugar may help people lower their daily calorie intake without restrictive dieting. We tested two theory-based interventions to help people do so. One involved gradually reducing sugar over time, and the other was based on mindfulness theory.

Behavioral compensation before and after eating at the Minnesota State Fair.

People regulate their eating behavior in many ways. They may respond to overeating by compensating with healthy eating behavior or increased exercise (i.e.

Examining the feasibility of implementing behavioural economics strategies that encourage home dinner vegetable intake among low-income children.

Objective: To examine the feasibility of implementing nine behavioural economics-informed strategies, or 'nudges', that aimed to encourage home dinner vegetable intake among low-income children.

Design: Caregivers were assigned six of nine strategies and implemented one new strategy per week (i.e.

Psychological and neural contributions to appetite self-regulation.

Objective: This paper reviews the state of the science on psychological and neural contributions to appetite self-regulation in the context of obesity.

Methods: Three content areas (neural systems and cognitive functions; parenting and early childhood development; and goal setting and goal striving) served to illustrate different perspectives on the psychological and neural factors that contribute to appetite dysregulation in the context of obesity. Talks were initially delivered at an NIH workshop consisting of experts in these three content areas, and then content areas were further developed through a review of the literature.

Promoting Public Health in the Context of the "Obesity Epidemic": False Starts and Promising New Directions.

In the battle to combat obesity rates in the United States, several misconceptions have dominated policy initiatives. We address those misconceptions, including the notion that restrictive diets lead to long-term weight loss, that stigmatizing obesity is an effective strategy for promoting weight reduction, and that weight and physical health should be considered synonymous with one another. In offering correctives to each of these points, we draw on psychological science to suggest new policies that could be enacted at both the local and national levels.

Prediction of daily food intake as a function of measurement modality and restriction status.

Objective: Research on eating relies on various indices (e.g., stable, momentary, neural) to accurately reflect food-related reactivity (e.

Increasing portion sizes of fruits and vegetables in an elementary school lunch program can increase fruit and vegetable consumption.

Increasing portion size can increase children's consumption of food. The goal of this study was to determine whether increasing the portion sizes of fruits and vegetables in an elementary school cafeteria environment would increase children's consumption of them. We measured each child's consumption of the fruit and vegetables served in a cafeteria line on a control day (normal cafeteria procedures) and on two intervention days.

Serving first in isolation increases vegetable intake among elementary schoolchildren.

Many people want to eat healthier, but they often fail in these attempts. We report two field studies in an elementary school cafeteria that each demonstrate children eat more of a vegetable (carrots, broccoli) when we provide it first in isolation versus alongside other more preferred foods. We propose this healthy first approach succeeds by triggering one's inherent motivation to eat a single food placed in front of them, and works even though they have prior knowledge of the full menu available and no real time constraints.

Testing the effectiveness of in-home behavioral economics strategies to increase vegetable intake, liking, and variety among children residing in households that receive food assistance.

Objective: To test the effectiveness of behavioral economics strategies for increasing vegetable intake, variety, and liking among children residing in homes receiving food assistance.

Design: A randomized controlled trial with data collected at baseline, once weekly for 6 weeks, and at study conclusion.

Setting: Family homes.

Ask a Busy Person: Attentional Myopia and Helping.

According to an oft-quoted piece of folk wisdom, if one wants something accomplished, the best person to ask is a busy person. We tested a version of this proposition in two studies. Study 1 exposed participants to a helping request in which cues promoting the relevant behavior were made more salient than those inhibiting it.