A problematic counter-regulation experiment: implications for the link between dietary restraint and overeating

The current study failed to find any evidence of laboratory counter-regulation amongst restrained eaters given a preload, regardless of the measures of dietary restraint used to classify subjects, including dieting status on the day of the study. Furthermore, there was no evidence to suggest that high restrainers characteristically overeat or experience a sense of loss of control over eating in naturalistic settings. These findings indicate that the link between dietary restraint and overeating or bulimic episodes is, at most, a weak one. Future investigations must incorporate more detailed and sensitive measures of both restraint and overeating if analogue studies are to be useful for understanding the process involved in clinically significant episodes of overeating or binge eating.