Ego Depletion, Self-Control, and Dieting
In my role as strength coach, I am firmly against diet culture, and work hard to undo the harms that these constructs have made on the community. Diet culture is responsible for so many individuals feeling less than, undervalued, shameful and hurt. It causes people to involve themselves in disordered eating habits and often times these normalized habits go unnoticed because they are seen as not that big of a deal, or even to some as “healthy”. My belief, is that an intuitive eating style is much more healthy for people’s physical and psychological health. Intuitive eating works on the basis that all individuals have a different point where their body may feel more comfortable in terms of weight and that by being more in tune with the messages our body gives us, we can build our interoceptive relationship with our body. This means listening to our hunger cues and eating foods that feel good to you without restriction.
The self-regulation article does in fact, help support this idea that dieting does not work and supports many of the ideas that I have come to believe today. The review article, The Weight-Inclusive versus Weight-Normative Approach to Health: Evaluating the Evidence for Prioritizing Well-Being over Weight Loss, by Tracy L Tyka, is one that I studied in my course on body image and intuitive eating for trainers by Registered Dietician Jessie Haggerty. I was able to make connections between the two articles and will reference back to it a few times throughout this paper.
One of the ideas stated in the weight inclusive article and intuitive eating concept is that people who participate in dieting often spend lots of time and energy thinking about food, decisions around food, and the morality of their choices, when this energy could be spent on hundreds of other activities that may be more helpful, healthy, and enjoyable activities. The self-regulation article confirms this, as it states that controlling behaviors requires inner resources that have a limited quantity.
The self-regulation article mentioned the relationship of dieting and self-control multiple times. One conclusion was that those who were dieting, were more likely to eat more after experiencing a bad mood, and after failing to solve puzzles. This article states that there is a depletion in strength connected to dieting due to the fact that people who are dieting are always exhibiting some kind of self-control. This means that dieting alone causes a depletion of inner self-control strength and when more stress is piled on top of dieting, there is even less energy to be put towards self-control in other matters.
People often view going on a diet with their life in a sort of vacuum. They view this plan they will stay on, without anticipating potential life stressors or unpredictable parts of life that may cause depletion of self-control strength. However, life stress is inevitable. At some time or another, people will experience stressors that will deplete their self-control storage. When someone’s self-control strength is depleted and they inevitably break their diet, people often are left feeling shame and guilt because they could not control themselves or that they aren’t good enough or a myriad of other negative feelings. This can lead to yo-yo dieting which can cause even more harmful effects as stated by the weight inclusive article.
The weight inclusive article also gives statistics that a majority of individuals who go on diets and achieve weight loss, gain back 77% of the weight they once lost after 5 years. This to say that if people are very unlikely to maintain their diet and their weight loss, and while going through the dieting process it decreases their self-control and therefore their energy for other activities, what is the true point of dieting? This to me was a profound argument against dieting.
It’s also worth stating that many of the individuals that those who may maintain the weight may have grown their strength in self-control however, is this self-control actually healthy? Is it beneficial to that individual? Or is it participating in harmful diet culture that still causes a negative effect on that individual. This poses a great question that even though we may be able to build our self-control strength, is that actually a benefit to that individual? Someone who is anorexic may show that their self- control is technically very strong in this area, however they are physically, emotionally, and mentally harming themselves through these actions.
One of the big questions I do wonder about this study, is the lack of mention of hunger when discussing dieting. Unlike other measures of self- control, for example displays of frustration, eating more and breaking a diet is also very much caused by a biological response of the body to protect itself because we need food to survive and nutrients to function properly. In the matter of dieting, while I believe this study of self-control strength model does help explain a piece of the puzzle to why dieting does not work, I also believe that there is a huge piece missing in these studies connecting dieting and self-control due to the lack of conversation around the biological need for food.
On an overall level, another question I would like to pose is the idea of values and its connection to self-control as well as who is the individual in front of during times of displaying self-control? Everyone has a very different value system and if they do not place as high of a value on something, they be less likely to display self-control in that area. I also believe we all perform differently in front of a coach, a mentor, a boss, our parents, or someone whom we want to impress. It is very likely that the company that is around us could very well alter our display of self-control.
