Distress and eating: Why do dieters overeat?

Objective: It has been shown that distress suppresses eating in nondieters (unrestrained eaters), but increases it in chronic dieters (restrained eate rs). This study attempted to investigate several possible explanations for this phenomenon, in particular, the "masking hypothesis." This hypothesis s tates that dieters use overeating to mask their distress in other areas of their lives by eating when distressed so that they can attribute their dist ress to their overeating rather than to more uncontrollable aspects of them selves or their lives. In addition, comfort, learned helplessness, and dist raction explanations were investigated. Method: Female college student subj ects were led to believe that they had or had not failed at a cognitive tas k, then were either given ad libitum or lust three small spoonfuls of ice c ream to taste and rate. Results: It was predicted that restrained subjects who ate ad libitum following failure would attribute more of their distress to their eating than would those who were allowed only a taste of ice crea m. The results were more complicated than predicted. They indicated that th e masking, distraction, and helplessness hypotheses all received some suppo rt in the present study and that they may work in tandem with each other. D iscussion: The results suggest that distress-induced overeating in restrain ed eaters may serve psychological functions for the individual, allowing fo r distraction from the distress or masking of the source of dysphoria. The possible relevance of these results to bulimic patients who may use their b inges to mask the true source of their distress is discussed. (C) 1999 by J ohn Wiley & Sons, Inc.