A Big Fat Crisis by Deborah Cohen Read Free Book Online

the image would never have crossed our minds.
    Wegner noted that people have deficiencies in their ability to control their mental activities, and our conscious thoughts are often the opposite of what we really want. Again, the dual system of effortful and automatic processing comes into play. It takes a lot of effort not to think about something because we have to distract ourselves. But our automatic processing system constantly checks our consciousness to determine if we have achieved our goal.
    We are wired to be hard on ourselves, to notice mistakes, so we can strive for perfection. Studies of brainwaves indicate that a specific release of “event-related brain potential” occurs when we make mistakes.It occurs only one-tenth of a second after the onset of electric activity of the muscle that is about to make the mistake—indicating its automaticity and our inability to stop ourselves from checking for errors. When our goal is to avoid or ignore something, our monitoring system is looking for the exact thing we are trying to forget, which makes forgetting impossible.
    Being on a diet increases our sensitivity to food cues. Some begin to notice foods they otherwise would have ignored. Thus dieters become “restrained” eaters, and resisting food may become increasingly difficult to the point where they are more likely to lose self-control than if they had not been trying to diet.
    Can Eating Slowly Help Reduce How Much We Eat?
    One typical piece of advice about dieting is to take smaller bites and eat more slowly. Eating more slowly is supposed to enhance the taste and enjoyment of food and increase the ability to feel full, which may otherwise be delayed until one has already eaten too much. Some believe that eating slowly will help obese people feel satisfied with smaller amounts of food.
    This advice was examined in a laboratory setting by Dr. Theresa Spiegel and her colleagues in 1993. 2 She invited nine obese women and nine lean women to participate and told them the purpose of the study was to observe their reactions to the taste of food to be provided in a lunch meal under different conditions. The researchers hooked up electrodes to the chewing muscles of the women’s cheeks so they could precisely count the chews and measure the speed of eating.
    The food the women were given consisted of tuna or turkey rolled in a piece of bread and sliced like sushi rolls into pieces weighing five, ten, or fifteen grams. They were also given bite-size pieces of bagels and cream cheese. The five-gram pieces were relatively small bites, but the fifteen-gram pieces were a big mouthful. Ten grams was considered the most comfortable size to put in the mouth. Each person was given a plate of twenty pieces, a cup, and a pitcher of water. The women were instructed to eat and drink as much as they wanted; but whenever they took any food, they were instructed to put the whole piece in theirmouth at once. This way the scientists could differentiate between big and little bites. The scientists then analyzed the rate of chewing, the time between bites, and the total amount of food consumed.
    First, they found no differences between the eating behaviors of lean and obese participants. Obese participants did not eat faster than lean ones. The larger the size of the bite, the faster the subjects ate. If the subjects ate the smaller pieces, they just took longer to eat. Regardless of whether the eating pattern included large or small bites, or whether the women took a longer or shorter time to complete the meal, the participants ended up eating the same amount of food. There were large differences among people with respect to how quickly they ate, but the speed of eating was not related to the total amount consumed. Although this was a small study, it did not appear that slow eating and little bites will likely be helpful in reducing the total amount consumed.
    Will Using Smaller Plates Help?
    Another bit of advice we often hear is to use