Flexible mindset makes long-term healthy habits easier

Flexible Restraint vs Rigid Control: The Power of Mindset in Managing Weight

Inside:  Mindset plays a huge role in eating behavior and weight, but there’s a big difference between flexible restraint and rigid rules.

 

 

“This concludes our broadcasting day.”

What? A few recollections from my youth do cause my kids’ mouths to drop open in disbelief.

The idea of television signing off for the night is unimaginable to people born after 1980. But yes, in my teen years, there was no more TV to stay up and watch after midnight. No DVRs allowed viewing recorded shows. And no disks, tapes, or downloads provided late-night movie viewing.

◊ Of course, you could stay up later than intended reading a page-turner novel or playing a game. But with no self-control needed to turn off the TV, it was easier to go to bed at your intended time.

◊ Today, although you might start off with the intention of watching one episode of something, streaming services make it easy to keep watching “just one more.”

In the same way, as the amount and variety of foods engineered to be super-tasty has exponentially grown, it can be a challenge to maintain a mindset that helps you stick with the choices you want to make without being so rigid it backfires.

 

How much self-restraint in eating habits is a good thing? And when does it turn into a mindset harmful to physical and psychological health? Part of the answer may depend on your food environment….

 

KEY TAKE-AWAY POINTS

Restrained eating refers to an intent to monitor and maintain control over what and how much you eat.

When you’re surrounded by foods that make it easy to overeat, some dietary restraint can be helpful. But research now shows that dietary restraint comes in different forms.

Rigid restraint imposes strict rules (often based on a negative self-image), and once a rule is inevitably broken — often in response to the presence of extra-appealing foods or emotional cues — overeating or eating with a sense of being out of control becomes very likely.

Flexible restraint focuses more on overall habits that fit personal goals. High-calorie choices might be kept to limited amounts, but there’s no guilt in enjoying them and no particular food or eating choice is forbidden.

People look at dietary restraint with different perspectives based on their life experience. Research suggests that flexible restraint may provide the middle ground for eating that can promote health, satisfy hunger, and provide pleasure.

 

Mindful Eating vs. Restrained Eating

bakery of sweets makes using flexible restraint helpful to avoid unintentional overeating

If we don’t tune in to body hunger signals and make what we eat a conscious choice, today’s 24/7 availability of large portions of high-calorie food makes weight control challenging for most of us.

How Eating Environment Can Promote Overeating

  • High amounts of sugar or fat make a food concentrated in calories. With these foods, you don’t need a large portion to get calories that easily add up to provide more calories than your body can use.
  • Ultra-processed snack foods and convenience products not only tend to be concentrated in calories. They are designed with flavorings in proportions tested to appeal to the appetite and drive increased consumption.
  • Cultural norms support eating or drinking during other activities and at any time of day. Food is available in vending machines, convenience shops, gas stations and coffee shops, many that never close. Standard portions in many restaurants supply half or more of a day’s calorie needs for most adults.

Food insecurity — a lack of stable access to nutritious food — clearly can lead to a less healthful diet. But it also be tied to eating to cope with distress, eating based on food availability rather than hunger, and other eating behaviors that lead to consuming food beyond body needs… without necessarily adding to life pleasure. And studies suggest that food insecurity in childhood may continue to have long-term influence on eating behaviors in adulthood.

What Does Mindful Eating Look Like in this Environment?

People may differ in what they mean by mindful eating. Here are some key elements as it is defined by The Center for Mindful Eating (TCME).

  • Recognizing and responding to hunger and fullness cues
  • Making food choices that meet nutritional needs and help foster overall well-being, while considering individual preferences and circumstances
  • Approaching food and eating with curiosity and without judging food as either “good” or “bad”

In other words, eating can promote health, satisfy hunger, and provide pleasure. You don’t have to choose.

Uncovering the Challenge of Dietary Restraint: Hazardous or Healthy?

When we’re surrounded by more food than we need to meet our calorie needs, including many choices scoring higher for driving appetite than for promoting health, eating mindfully means that sometimes we say, “No” to food.

Not an absolute “never”. Just a “not now” or “I’ve had enough.”

Dietary restraint can refer to rigid rules about food, or when or where you eat. But it can simply mean making a conscious choice of whether just because you can eat or drink something, it’s what you choose to do.

Classic examples of restraint gone wrong occur when people impose rigid rules about what and how much to eat, but the rules don’t fit personal needs, preferences, or lifestyle. In these circumstances, any benefits tend to be short-lived. And for some, that rigidity can even trigger thought patterns and behaviors that are harmful.

 

How Can We Study Restraint?

To understand how we can promote healthy, enjoyable eating in a world that makes it easy to overdo, we need to understand when and how restraint becomes helpful or harmful.

Two key terms:

  • Dietary restraint (sometimes called cognitive restraint) is the intent to monitor and regulate food consumption. Often, but not always, this is designed to control weight.
  • Disinhibition means susceptibility to overeating (often in response to dietary restraint) or a sense of eating out of control, such as in the presence of palatable foods or emotional cues.

Lots of research has examined questions about restrained eating. Questionnaires are used to assess people’s attitudes and eating behaviors.

Before you take action based on results of a study, consider how it measures dietary restraint. Different tools look at restraint through a somewhat different lens.

  • Is the tool used in a study a validated tool?
  • Is it assessing intent or behavior?
  • Does it focus on a preoccupation with weight and weight loss, or on making conscious choices about eating?
  • Does it differentiate between factors that trigger disinhibited eating?

 

Fundamental Concern: Will Dietary Restraint Lead Down the Wrong Path?

like water breaking through a floodgate, breaking rules of rigid dietary restraint can prompt overwhelming urges to eat

Like a powerful river breaking through floodgates of a dam, the force of eating urges once the security “wall” of control has broken can feel like an uncontrollable torrent.

Why worry about a restrained eating mindset?

  • Maintaining the “rules” created comes with a mental and emotional toll.
  • Once the rules are broken, a backlash in eating habits often occurs (“disinhibition”).

Does dietary restraint promote binge eating?

Binge eating is characterized by eating significantly more food in a short period of time than most people would eat under similar circumstances, without regard for hunger. Binge-eating episodes are marked by feelings of lack of control and result in significant distress.

Eating behavior like binge-eating occurs across a wide spectrum. It may involve eating large amounts of food out of sync with physical hunger. It may subjectively feel like binge-eating because of a sense of losing control or using it to cope with emotions. It may occur over a couple hours, or last only a short time. These and other variations can be grouped together as a pattern of disinhibited eating.

  • Binge eating that doesn’t meet this threshold of frequency or severity may still warrant assessment by a mental health professional and perhaps professional help addressing it.
  • Even though it doesn’t qualify as an eating disorder, this pattern of eating can lead to emotional stress and physical health risks if it occurs frequently enough to promote development of chronic diseases or unhealthy blood sugar levels.

People with binge eating episodes occurring at least once per week for three or more months who don’t engage in compensatory behaviors (like purging, fasting or excessive exercise) may meet DSM-5 (the official “rule-book” of mental health diagnosis) criteria for Binge Eating Disorder (BED).

Binge Eating Disorder, like other eating disorders, is a serious, complex medical and psychiatric illness. Genetic, biological, environmental, and social elements all play a role. In some people, a history of dieting with restrictive rules can contribute to development of binge eating, but a mindset of dietary restraint does not cause an eating disorder all on its own.

The American Psychiatric Association emphasizes that there are substantial differences between binge eating disorder and the common phenomenon of overeating.

Does More Restraint Always Signal Trouble for Weight Loss and Regain?

A major downside of too much dietary restraint is the overeating that tends to occur once you’ve consumed a “forbidden” food or broken a dietary rule.

Most efforts to change eating for weight loss involve strategies to control food intake. Some people count calories; others count “points” or grams of fat or carbohydrate. You may have tried changing eating habits without counting by focusing on limiting foods high in energy density (food that’s concentrated in calories in relatively small portions) or by reducing portion size.

Do all of these lead to preoccupation with food and rebound overeating?

Let’s dig a little deeper

  • How big a culprit are the physiological signals (like changes in hunger and satiety hormones) prompted by reducing – or making too big a cut – in calories?
  • Is it the mental energy and time required to plan eating choices creating stress?
  • Does constant attention to a weight loss goal and tracking everything you eat and drink increase perceptions of deprivation?

Here are two studies of dietary restraint in people trying to lose weight.

Study #1:
Prevention of Obesity Using Novel Dietary Strategies (POUNDS LOST) trial is a randomized clinical trial that examined the effects of 4 calorie-restricted, heart-healthy diets on weight loss over two years. Diets varied in the proportion of calories from total fat, protein and carbohydrate. All were set up to provide 750 calories per day below individually-determined baseline needs.

  • Weight loss occurred mainly in the first 6 months, with an average loss of 6.2% (about 12-13 pounds).
  • After 2 years, most had regained a portion of what they lost. Compared to their starting point, average total weight loss was 3.5% (down about 7 pounds).
  • Study conclusions: Higher dietary restraint scores predicted less weight loss and more weight regain between year 1 and year 2. Higher scores for disinhibition were not linked with weight loss (baseline to 6 months), but did predict more weight regain from 6 months to 1 year.

But, before we target dietary restraint as a sign of big trouble for weight loss, let’s take a closer look. The study reports that each 1-point increase in Cognitive Restraint (possible scores 0 to 21) was associated with half a pound less weight loss over 6 months.

    • Based on the range of scores at baseline, it looks like although the difference in weight loss between people high and low in restraint as “statistically significant” may amount to about 4 pounds difference. That may not be enough to make a difference in health.
    • The range of disinhibition scores at baseline suggests that the association with weight regain may have meant a difference of about 3 pounds. Even when results are statistically significant, it’s important to consider, is the difference practically important.
    • The cognitive restraint score used in this study was the total score, with no analysis of its two subscales that consider rigid restraint and flexible restraint separately. (More on that below)

Study #2:
A randomized controlled trial in women with overweight or obesity aimed to separate the effects of reducing calorie intake from a mindset of cognitive dietary restraint as influences on weight loss, weight regain, appetite and stress.

  • Both groups were provided with food providing total calories 15% below what they’d need to maintain their current weight. Calorie needs were estimated individually based on metabolic testing.
  • Foods in both groups created daily eating low in energy density. Foods high in dietary fiber and water content allowed a filling amount of food despite limited calories.
  • In the group that promoted dietary restraint, people interacted with registered dietitians who followed a protocol emphasizing weight loss, and weight was measured daily.
  • In the group aiming to reduce calories without increasing dietary restraint, people were instructed by registered dietitians who followed a protocol that emphasized eating for heart health. Weight was checked twice a week, but participants were told this was only to ensure they were receiving an appropriate amount of food, and that weight loss was not a goal.

 

Here are the study results. Are you surprised?

At the end of the 4-week intervention, both groups lost an equal amount of weight (about 5 pounds).

After 3 months with no intervention, weight in both groups had remained stable.

Women in both groups increased restrained eating scores. But feelings of hunger, food cravings, and disinhibited eating decreased at 4 weeks and at follow-up — even in the group targeted to increase dietary restraint.

Several factors stand out for consideration:

  • The calorie reduction was enough to promote a modest weight loss, but it was not extreme. Based on data provided about baseline needs, average reduction was about 360 calories/day. This is about half the reduction in the POUNDS LOST study noted above.
  • Keeping energy density low may have been important for promoting satiety and avoiding excess hunger that could otherwise promote disinhibited eating.
  • During the intervention, food was provided for women. There was no need for them to stress over planning meals. They were asked to check off foods they ate from a list of foods provided, but they were not asked to track calorie or nutrient intake.
  • During follow-up, when food was no longer provided, weight loss did not continue. However, neither group experienced the weight regain that some might have expected. And scores for disinhibition (eating in response to emotions or external cues) remained lower than at entry to the study in both groups.

This suggests that dietary restraint – meaning making conscious choices about food based on health goals – is not necessarily harmful.

 

How Restrained Eating Could Align with Health

On the surface, unrestrained eating sounds like a healthy approach.

But, then we circle back to the food and cultural environment in which most people live… providing a vast supply of foods high in calories and limited in nutrients, often available in portions that don’t match most adults’ calorie needs.

Research now suggests that many people can use dietary restraint to successfully change eating patterns. Current models of restrained eating consider it a complex mindset with several components.

Restraint – how we respond to eating urges — seems to have two different faces.

  • Rigid restraint involves strict rules and a downside that it may promote binge eating once a rule is broken.
  • Flexible restraint, a less strict approach that includes occasional high-calorie choices in limited amounts without guilt. No particular food or eating choice is forbidden. Flexible restraint usually involves less internal pressure to diet. There’s a more gradual understanding of how overall eating pattern influences energy balance and weight gain or loss.

What the Nuances of Flexible Restraint Can Offer

Flexible eating restraint provides a way to make choices consistent with personal values-based goals.Keeping balanced and flexible is like flexible restraint with self-talk and mindset for healthy choices

  • Rigid restraint was linked with greater short-term weight loss in a study of European women in a weight control program. But after two years it was unrelated to weight. Flexible restraint was one of the strongest predictors of weight loss at two years.
  • Behavior choices consistent with dietary restraint were associated with less binge eating in a study of a weight loss intervention for veterans with overweight or obesity. It was maladaptive intent for restraint – often reflecting guilt and shame – that was associated with more binge eating and eating in response to external cues.
  • Flexible restraint may make a difference for long-term weight control. In a study that followed women’s weight for 20 years, among women who scored highest for tendency to overeat in response to everyday life circumstances and to emotions, those who were also low in flexible restraint gained the most weight — an average of 48 pounds. Those with a mindset showing more flexible restraint gained less than half that amount.

How to Increase Flexible Restraint and Its Effectiveness

Fortunately, flexible restraint is a mindset you can learn.

Here are key points from studies of programs teaching skills aimed to increase flexible restraint in the context of weight management.

Focus on personalized goals in line with benefits that are important to you.

  • How would a change in weight or better control of blood pressure support what you want in life? How can choices you make affect how you feel mentally and physically today?
  • Skip the perfectionism. Talk with your healthcare provider about goals that are realistic and appropriate for you.

Develop a learning mindset. Remind yourself that improving eating habits and lifestyle skills takes time and practice. Reframe how you look at lapses, not as proof that you are bound to fail but as opportunities to adjust your plan.

  • Practice skills for monitoring behaviors and progress towards your goals. Goal-setting and keeping track of changes can be valuable tools to move from positive intentions to acting on them. It’s your attitude and self-talk that makes them helpful instead of harmful.
  • Answer back to self-talk that is rigid or perfectionistic. Allow yourself to question those “always” and “never” rules and expectations. Reframe such thoughts to a more flexible, positive vision of boundaries. That’s the key to changing self-talk so that instead of working against you, it works for you.

Identify skills you need to overcome barriers you see standing in the way of the eating habits you want. The concept known as self-efficacy refers to your confidence that you can successfully overcome internal or external obstacles that may stand in the way of actions you want to take. And it’s consistently linked to actually being successful in changing behavior.

  • Move step by step toward a baseline of healthy eating habits that meet nutritional needs without leaving you feeling deprived.
  • Learn to tune in to and honor your body’s hunger signals with portions that make sense, using an attitude of self-respect rather than restriction.
  • Look for ways you can reduce the toll of factors that prompt unintentional eating that can feel out of control. People differ in whether their external environment, response to emotions, or both tends to drive this eating.

Flexible Restraint in Everyday Eating Situations Is the Key

Studies show that overall, the biggest problem from overeating in response to an abundance of high-calorie food is not what you eat on special occasions or holidays. It’s what you eat – and how you try to control it — in everyday life.

Make flexible restraint easier with choices about food visibility.
Numerous studies show that the more accessible and visible food is, the more likely we are to eat it…regardless of whether or not we’re hungry. You can change some of this visibility that prompts eating that’s not mindful.

  • Keep all serving bowls (or everything but vegetables) off the table.
  • Store sweets in cabinets rather than sitting on counters or tables.
  • Limit how wide a variety of high-calorie snack foods you bring home.
  • Choose restaurants serving reasonable portions rather than all-you-can-eat-buffets.

Practice breaking automatic pilot. Much of today’s widespread availability of food is not under your control, however. Mindful eating means stopping to make a decision, instead of buying a cookie each time you stop for coffee, grabbing a candy bar while in the grocery line, or eating an extra slice of pizza just because it’s there.

Develop positive responses to emotional triggers. Without the rigid rules that can prompt feelings of failure and a “might as well” attitude about eating, emotional cues for unintended eating should pose less of a challenge.

  • If you’ve developed habits of using food as a tool to cope with stress or emotions, practice trying a non-eating behavior as your first response to these cues.
  • Some people pause for a few deep breaths. Others take a walk, call a friend, or distract themselves with a crossword puzzle. Over time, you can find what works for you for different kinds of emotional triggers.

Bottom line on Rigid and Flexible Restraint:

Many people see self-restraint in eating choices in black and white terms — either as essential to healthy eating or as a major barrier to it. But research now offers more recognition of the nuances in a mindset of restraint. If it’s based on weight bias and perfectionistic standards out of sync with physiology, that’s rigid restraint and is unlikely to support long-term health. However, in the context of today’s abundance of high-calorie, less-nutritious food, a mindset of flexible restraint can be a key element of doable healthy eating.

For health professionals, could this be a good conversation-starter for some of the people with whom you work?

⇒ Want a free tip sheet? This client-ready guide can help create a mindset for making choices about eating without being captive to rigid rules. A checklist helps identify how often your mindset leans toward rigid versus flexible restraint. Then uncover ideas for how to make a mindset of flexible restraint easier in your everyday life.

To get the tip sheet… and get future research updates straight to your email inbox:

Click here.

Helpful Resources

For information about nonjudgmentally tuning in to internal and external eating signals, and developing attitudes free of depriving rules and unrealistic expectations:

For more on binge eating disorder

  • The Academy for Eating Disorders offers

9 Truths About Eating Disorders

9 More Truths About Eating Disorders: Weight and Weight Stigma

  • The American Psychiatric Association offers a summary, What Are Eating Disorders, of different forms of eating disorders, and it can be printed to share.
  • The National Institutes of Health NIDDK offers information on eating disorders and binge eating disorder on its website
References

Dochat C, Godfrey KM, Golshan S, Cuneo JG, Afari N. Dietary restraint and weight loss in relation to disinhibited eating in obese Veterans following a behavioral weight loss intervention. Appetite. 2019 Sep 1;140:98-104. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2019.05.013. —

Hall, K.D. (2018), Did the Food Environment Cause the Obesity Epidemic? Obesity, 26: 11-13. https://doi.org/10.1002/oby.22073

Hays, NP and Roberts, SB. Aspects of Eating Behaviors “Disinhibition” and “Restraint” Are Related to Weight Gain and BMI in Women. Obesity (Silver Spring), 2008;16(1):52-8. doi: 10.1038/oby.2007.12.

Keenan, G.S., Christiansen, P. and Hardman, C.A. (2021), Household Food Insecurity, Diet Quality, and Obesity: An Explanatory Model. Obesity, 29: 143-149. https://doi.org/10.1002/oby.23033

Leung CW, Wolfson JA. Food Insecurity Among Older Adults: 10-Year National Trends and Associations with Diet Quality. J Am Geriatr Soc. 2021 Apr;69(4):964-971. doi: 10.1111/jgs.16971.

Liu X, Hanseman DJ, Champagne CM, et al. Predicting Weight Loss Using Psychological and Behavioral Factors: The POUNDS LOST Trial. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2020;105(4):1274-1283. doi:10.1210/clinem/dgz236

Morin I, Bégin C, Maltais-Giguère J, et al. Impact of Experimentally Induced Cognitive Dietary Restraint on Eating Behavior Traits, Appetite Sensations, and Markers of Stress during Energy Restriction in Overweight/Obese Women. J Obes. 2018;2018:4259389. doi:10.1155/2018/4259389

Schaumberg K, Anderson DA, Anderson LM, Reilly EE, Gorrell S. Dietary restraint: what’s the harm? A review of the relationship between dietary restraint, weight trajectory and the development of eating pathology. Clin Obes. 2016 Apr;6(2):89-100. doi: 10.1111/cob.12134.

Schaumberg K, Welch E, Breithaupt L, et al. The Science Behind the Academy for Eating Disorders’ Nine Truths About Eating Disorders. Eur Eat Disord Rev. 2017 Nov;25(6):432-450. doi: 10.1002/erv.2553.

Teixeira PJ, Silva MN, Coutinho SR, et al. Mediators of Weight Loss and Weight Loss Maintenance in Middle-aged Women. Obesity, 2010. 18(4):725–735.

Teixeira PJ, Carraça EV, Marques MM, et al. Successful behavior change in obesity interventions in adults: a systematic review of self-regulation mediators. BMC Med. 2015 Apr 16;13:84. doi: 10.1186/s12916-015-0323-6.

7 Comments

  1. […] If you are a dessert-lover, trying to completely give up desserts can lead to a feeling of deprivation that leads to overeating. However, don’t make it harder on yourself than it has to be to limit desserts to reasonable […]

  2. […] These terms are often used in relation to weight control, but this earlier Smart Bytes® post about Flexible vs. Rigid Mindset offers tips likely relevant to many of the habits you are trying to […]

  3. […] Yes, with high-calorie, low-nutrient food and opportunities to be sedentary all day widely available, you may need some “restraint” to make healthy choices. Long-term success, however, seems greater with less rigid and more Flexible Restraint. […]

  4. 5 things you should know before you give up on your New Year Weight Loss Resolution! - Maine Info on January 11, 2016 at 10:40 am

    […] So what, you ate too much over the weekend? You drank a couple of beers and ate a whole pizza. You’re realizing that losing weight is just an impossible dream and it’s a waste of time to keep chasing the dream, right? Wrong! Very few people who successfully lose weight and even fewer people who keep off the weight did so by being perfect. Every time you eat too much or eat something you shouldn’t have eaten is an opportunity to learn a new weight management skill.  This missteps are telling you that your plan needs adjusting because it’s too rigid. You need to learn how to indulge and move on. It’s called flexible restraint. […]

  5. […] quietly set up an environment that promotes healthy eating. You can also take steps on your own to make healthy choices easier and bypass less-healthy […]

  6. […] Yes, with high-calorie, low-nutrient food and opportunities to be sedentary all day widely available, you may need some “restraint” to make healthy choices. Long-term success, however, seems greater with less rigid and more Flexible Restraint. […]

  7. […] quietly set up an environment that promotes healthy eating. You can also take steps on your own to make healthy choices easier and bypass less-healthy […]

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Tagged: flexible restraint, mindset, restrained eating, self-talk, weight, weight control, weight loss

Meet the author/educator

Karen Collins
MS, RDN, CDN, FAND

I Take Nutrition Science From Daunting to Doable.™

As a registered dietitian nutritionist, one of the most frequent complaints I hear from people — including health professionals — is that they are overwhelmed by the volume of sometimes-conflicting nutrition information.

I believe that when you turn nutrition from daunting to doable, you can transform people's lives.

Accurately translating nutrition science takes training, time and practice. Dietitians have the essential training and knowledge, but there’s only so much time in a day. I delight in helping them conquer “nutrition overwhelm” so they can feel capable and confident as they help others thrive.

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