Restraint theory’s account of why cognitive dietary control leaves eating vulnerable to collapse — a model and its argument, not a demonstrated causal chain.
What the evidence says
- On restraint theory’s account, as Herman and Polivy’s 1980 chapter set it out, restrained eaters use cognitive rules to limit eating, replacing physiological cues[1]
- When cognitive restraints are breached (a “forbidden” food is consumed), disinhibition occurs. In the founding preload experiment, the authors’ expectation that ”high restraint subjects’ intake would vary directly with preload size while low restraint subjects would eat in inverse proportion to preload size, was confirmed”[2]
- On restraint theory’s account, dieting replaces physiological regulation with cognitively-controlled eating that is vulnerable to collapse[1]
- Breaking dietary “rules” is followed by overeating rather than a return to the rule — the direction of cause is the model’s claim, not a separate finding[1]