My Top 5 of most illustrative Diet Blogs

It is time for New Year's resolutions and new diet and exercise plans for a slim body. Luckily, you are not alone in your painful efforts to lose weight. Many people around the globe are sharing their ups and downs with you. You can learn a lot of the psychology behind people's efforts to lose weight by reading diet blogs. After reading dozens of blogs, I can see some key issues coming back all the time. Therefore, here my Top 5 of the most illustrative diet blogs:

Number 5) The Diet Blogger who reports everything she is eating

Reporting what you eat gives insights in how much and when you eat and just the reporting itself makes you think twice before putting food in your mouth. Although it takes a lot of time, effort and commitment, a food diary can even double weight loss. Useful to make a good start, but I am wondering who is really interested in all your blog posts and tweets what you eat?

Number 4) The Diet Blogger who follows a different diet weekly
This is an interesting 'working experiment' of a woman who wants to share her experiences on a wide variety of diets, from the Cabbage Soup diet (that week must be long...) till the Subway diet and many more. Research has shown that more variety in the diet leads to more consumption, so this blogger is making her life much harder. On the other hand, she is one of the rare bloggers who keeps on blogging and losing weight. Apparently, she is having fun.

Number 3) The Diet Blogger who tries to motivate himself by being sponsored for charity

Jochem tries to lose 40 kilograms while supporting the Dutch Heart Association at the same time. This creates accountability and reporting your progress to an internet audience can have enormous motivating value, particularly when you are successful. But when the days and weeks come when you do not feel like eating right and exercising, it is hard to keep on being honest. After one or two blog posts with frustrations and disappointing results, most diet bloggers quit blogging.

Number 2) The Diet Blogger who knows that just expressing a good intention is satisfying

I guess that is the reason that someone started this twitter blog and left it by that action alone. Making the decision to do something good already gives a boost to your self-esteem. One study even found that increased fitness intentions are used as a direct defense against concerns about death. So, start a diet blog; a simple way to feel better instantly!

Number 1) The Diet Blogger who succeeds for about four weeks

I am afraid this is the most illustrative diet blog. John had very ambitious intentions and it seems that he failed to fulfill them. And that is what happens with most diet blogs: after a few weeks dieters stop blogging simply because they quit dieting. The motivation to keep on dieting typically falls after about four weeks. Two well-known experts in the field of diet psychology, Janet Polivy and Peter Herman, call this the 'False Hope Syndrome' which is characterized by unrealistic expectations about the likely speed, amount, and ease of losing weight, which lead to disappointment and failure.

So, watch out for unrealistic expectations, but remember: without hope and good intentions, it is never possible to lose weight. And maybe a diet blog helps you in achieving your goals.

Flexible working arrangements – will it make us fat or skinny?

Work whenever and wherever you want. The days are over when we worked a standard 8 hours per day, from 9 till 5. Here in the Netherlands, this is the 'Week of the flexible working arrangements' (November 8 till 14), or in Dutch: ‘Het Nieuwe Werken’. 

More freedom, flexibility and responsibility. That sounds great, but what will be the influence on our eating habits? Will it make us fat or skinny? Think about it. The traditional office job is relatively structured and predictable. Coffee in the morning, lunch around noon in the canteen, and then back to work behind your desk. Compare this to flexible working conditions. Full of temptations at first sight. Work anywhere you want, at Starbucks for example. After all, Starbucks provides you with 'a great digital experience to go with your great cup of coffee'. But at the same time, they also provide you with a wide range of temptations, such as Frappucchinos, Iced Lemon Pound Cake (my favorite!) and Double Chocolate Brownies. Working at home may also lead to overeating as you get easily drawn to your kitchen cabinet and fridge, filled with indulgent snacks and leftovers. And luckily there are no colleagues looking over your shoulder saying: 'Hey, again enjoying a candy bar?’  Seeing food means eating food. Visibility and convenience are the two main influencers of how much we eat. Remember the famous candy jar experiment of Brian Wansink. Brian placed candy jars full with chocolates at office workers' desks. After a month, the jar was moved six feet away. The workers ate five more candies daily (about 125 calories) when the jar was nearby. A typical example of "Mindless eating".

Fortunately, a quick look at the scientific literature paints a much more positive picture. Flexible working arrangements have a positive impact on a variety of outcomes. Diane Halpern found that employees with time-flexible work policies reported less stress and higher levels of commitment to their employer. Another study in 2007 found that if employees saw their work schedules as flexible, they were more likely to exercise, eat well and get the sleep they need. It is well-known that stress is a trigger to overeat. Too much stress undermines people's ability to control their desires and hence their body weight. In sum, good news for the 24-7 world that we live in nowadays. A better work-life balance means less stress for you, your family and your colleagues. And probably less dieting.

The Negative Calorie Illusion - Do your calories also magically disappear from your plate?

A noteworthy study of Alexander Chernev in the Journal of Consumer Psychology (April 2011 issue) showed that people have misguided beliefs about the relationship between a meal healthiness and its impact on weight gain. Simply said; they believe that adding a healthy item (such as an apple or salad) to a meal magically decreases the number of calories in a meal.

The reason is that people tend to categorize foods as healty and unhealthy ones. Particularly dieters are more likely to believe in 'negative calories'.

This is not the first study on the so-called health halos. Health halos are associations that people have with certain foods or restaurants. Brian Wansink and Pierre Chandon found that there's a health halo around foods at restaurants like Subway that leads people to overeat on side dishes and grossly underestimate the number of calories they consume. Even organic foods have a health halo, as people believe they have fewer calories (according to a recent study of Schuldt and Schwarz).

Not so good news. At least, not for people who want to manage their weight and eat healthy. Good news for restaurants. Just simply add a salad to your meal or menu and everything looks more wholesome. Not surprising that most (fast food) restaurants already discovered this without doing any consumer research.

According to Chernev at his interesting blog: 'The focus of current public policy campaigns needs to shift away from the stereotypes associated with “good” and “bad” foods and toward the quantity of food consumed.'  I agree completely. And stop dieting: it poisons your mind with this kind of misbeliefs!

Our Food & Brand lab study in the USA Today!

Exciting day today! This morning I ran to the hotel lobby to get a copy of the USA Today. And why? Because our study (the one that I did with Brian Wansink and Mitsuru Shimizu at the Food and Brand lab last year) can be found at the Life section of this important newspaper.

I love the headline: 'Watch a fitness commercial and you just might eat less'. And this is what Nanci Hellmich, the journalist of the USA Today wrote:

'If you're struggling to eat less and keep your appetite under control, here's a tip: Try watching someone else exercising. People consumed less at meals after watching exercise-related commercials than they did after viewing other types of ads, a new study says. Researchers at the Cornell Food and Brand Lab in Ithaca, N.Y., recruited 125 participants and had half watch TV exercise-related ads for running shoes and fitness centers. The other half watched ads for things such as car insurance and washing machines. Then all participants were offered a buffet lunch. Findings:

• Those who saw the fitness messages ate 22% fewer calories at lunch than the others.
• Participants who viewed the exercise commercials reported feeling more active, athletic and in better shape than those in the other group.
• Those who watched the exercise messages thought the meal was healthier and liked it better than those watching the other ads.

The exercise commercials may have caused people to be more health- and body-conscious, says the study's lead author, Ellen van Kleef. She presented the results this weekend at the annual meeting of the Obesity Society in San Diego. The fitness messages reminded people of how much work it is to burn off calories, says Brian Wansink, director of the Cornell lab. "They realized that half-cup of pudding is going to mean a mile and half on the treadmill."'