Journal of Obesity & Weight Loss Therapy
Open Access

Research Article

Changes in Disinhibition, Restraint and Hunger and Associated Characteristics during a Weight Loss Intervention

Department of Family Medicine and Public Health, School of Medicine, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

*Corresponding Author:

Cheryl L. Rock, PhD, RD
University of California, San Diego, 3855 Health Sciences Drive
Room 3077, La Jolla, CA 92093-0901, USA
Tel: +1858 822 1126
E-mail: clrock@ucsd.edu

Received date: July 28, 2017; Accepted date: August 7, 2017; Published date: August 21, 2017

Citation: Rock CL, Flatt SW, Nichols JF, Pakiz B, Barkai HS, et al. (2017) Changes in Disinhibition, Restraint and Hunger and Associated Characteristics during a Weight Loss Intervention. J Obes Weight Loss Ther 7:348. doi: 10.4172/2165-7904.1000348

Copyright: © 2017 Rock CL, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Background: Understanding how diet composition and personal characteristics relate to eating behaviors of individuals in weight loss programs could better inform the development and expectations of prescribed weight loss regimens. The purpose of this study was to examine whether diet composition has a significant effect on eating behaviors of individuals participating in a weight loss intervention and what characteristics significantly correlate with changes in such behaviors.

Methods: The Eating Inventory questionnaire was used to assess eating behaviors of restraint, disinhibition and hunger at baseline and 6 months among individuals participating in a weight loss intervention who were prescribed a standard reduced-energy-density diet or a walnut-enriched reduced-energy diet as one component of a behavioral weight loss intervention.

Results: After 6 months of intervention, there were significant improvements in both study arms on all scales and most subscales, with overall restraint increasing, disinhibition decreasing and hunger decreasing. Other correlations were that as restraint increased, weight loss increased; as hunger decreased, disinhibition decreased; and as physical activity increased, disinhibition decreased. Among personal characteristics, restraint was significantly associated with sex, age and education at baseline, with women reporting higher restraint than men, younger participants reporting lower restraint than older individuals, and college graduates reporting lower restraint than noncollege graduates. Over the course of the weight loss program, there were significant correlations between increased restraint and being male as well as decreased hunger and being a college graduate.

Conclusion: Our results highlight the significance of restraint among the three eating behaviors as it was the only behavior significantly correlated with weight loss and was also correlated with several personal characteristics. Disinhibition and hunger showed other significant correlations with one another that do not directly correlate with weight loss but may be important in other aspects of weight control such as weight loss maintenance.

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