The Polar Bear Effect When Dieting

Precontemplation is the phase in which we wonder if there is even any hope. Is it even possible to make a change? When it comes to weight loss most of us that are in precontemplation are here because we have tried a calorie restrictive diet in the past and ended up gaining weight.

At this point it may be helpful to look at restrictive dieting as the problem, and our weight is just a symptom. In fact, this is the case for almost everyone who comes to us for weight loss.

Probably the most important, yet seldom mentioned, study of weight loss took place in 1944. It was called the Minnesota Starvation Experiment. The United States government anticipated that at the conclusion of World War II, there would be thousands of people in Europe and Asia that were suffering from famine as a result of the war.

In order to determine how best to rehabilitate them they commissioned a study using conscientious objectors. From a group of 400 volunteers, they selected 36 healthy men of similar characteristics and cut their daily calorie intake from 3200 to 1800 calories for 24 weeks to induce a famine-like state, while maintaining a 3000 calorie a day workload.

Before going further, I just want to point out that many calorie restrictive diet programs today call for even less calories than the starvation experiment did, while also asking participants to workout in excess of their daily calorie intake.

Once the experiment achieved the target famine conditions, it was then focused on the requirements to successfully rehabilitate the participants.

The study concluded that restrictive dieting significantly increases severe emotional distress and depression. Restrictive dieting causes a pre-occupation with food during both the diet and the recovery phase including binge eating for up to five months after the calorie restriction. A  complete loss of sexual interest. A significant decrease in metabolism during the restrictive diet phase, and very often edema in the extremities especially the ankles.

Many of the study participants who were previously healthy developed eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. A key finding of the study was that dieters need both physical nourishment and psychological training in order to recover from the dieting process.

The findings of the experiment are consistent with almost every dieter we have ever worked with. It has been helpful for people to hear about the results of this experiment so they know these effects are not unique to them.

In fact, they almost immediately identify with the pre-occupation with food. This is normal, because this need is driven by both biology and psychology.

A great example of this is the evasion-of-suppression model developed by Daniel Wegner*. For the next five seconds think about anything at all as long as it has nothing to do with polar bears. Nothing at all, not the bears, nor their habitat. Not snow. Now go.

Where you successful? Did you succeed in blocking out all polar bear related thoughts? Even if you were able to block them out for the five seconds, how many polar bear related thoughts have you had in the last three minutes? I’m willing to bet more than you have had in the last day, or week, or probably year.

This is the evasion of suppression model and basically states that when we try to suppress our attention about a subject, we instead create an obsession around it.

So just by deciding that we are on a restrictive diet, by knowing that there are foods we are not allowed to eat, we create a pre-occupation with food. Specifically, the foods we are trying to avoid.

Couple that with the biological urge to satisfy the hunger created by calorie restrictive diets and at some point it becomes overwhelming.

The more we try to not to think or feel something, the more drawn our brains are to it. That’s why this is NOT a calorie-restrictive diet plan. In fact, your not even on a diet.

What you are on, is a guided experiment in which the results you experience will shape what habits you develop. It is an experiment to recognize and influence the biological and psychological effects of stress in order to lose excess body fat.

*Daniel Wegner “Suppressing the White Bears” Monitor On Psychology. October 2011.