Dietary Restraint

Goal

To be able to have more flexibility in your eating

Dietary Restraint

Dietary restraint refers to limiting eating and is not in and of itself a negative behavior. For people who have an eating disorder, however, dietary restraint is typically extreme in intensity and rigid in form. You may have multiple, demanding dietary rules concerning when you eat (e.g., not after 6:00 p.m.), how many calories you eat per day, and what foods you eat. There may be several foods that you do not allow yourself to eat at all. When you attempt to follow all of these types of dietary rules, your eating becomes inflexible and restricted in nature. Dietary restraint can lead to dietary restriction, which is under eating and can have many negative health consequences.

The extreme version of dietary restraint can cause preoccupation with thoughts about food and eating, which may interfere with concentration and many aspects of day-to-day life. You may not be able to eat, for example, unless you know the exact composition of what you are eating. You may also feel uncomfortable eating in front of others out of fear that they will view your eating as a sign of weakness or indulgence. Since eating is a highly social activity, extreme dietary restriction can cause you to feel isolated and negatively impact your relationships with others.

When a dietary slip occurs, you may react to the perceived failure by binge eating and deviating from your typical eating patterns. You will likely resume your dietary restraint later in the day or on the next day, but in that moment of “failure”, you give in to the temptation to indulge. The tendency to view things in only two categories, such as success or failure, when they are actually on a continuum is referred to as all-or-nothing thinking.

In order to decrease the intensity and rigidity of your dietary restraint, it is important to identify rules that you have established for yourself, understand the underlying concern that is motivating you to follow that rule, and conduct an experiment to test that concern. Feared consequences often drive dietary rules but do not necessarily occur when the rule is broken. By demonstrating to yourself that the feared consequence is not going to occur, in time your eating will become more flexible.

Dietary Restraint Exercise

Instructions: Use the table on the next page to list your various dietary rules, especially those that interfere with social eating, and the concerns that are driving each rule. Come up with a way to break the rule in order to test the underlying concerns. Then, record what happened and any changes you plan to make as a result of your concerns being proven or disproven.

Your dietary rules may include foods that you avoid eating. If the approach you choose to test your concern is to eat the previously avoided food, keep in mind that the amount you eat of that food is not important since even a small quantity will achieve the purpose of breaking the dietary rule. In the instance of food avoidance, the long-term goal is to be able to eat and enjoy normal quantities of the food without feeling anxious about eating it.

Thought Record
Dietary Rule	Underlying Concerns	Test the Concerns	Outcome/Comments

Next Step

If you need help identifying your dietary rules, go to a grocery store and note all foods that you would be reluctant to eat because of their possible effect on your shape or weight or because you fear that eating them might trigger a binge. Rank the foods by dividing them into 4 or 5 groups of foods you would find increasingly difficult to eat. Progressively introduce the foods into your diet, starting with the easiest group and ending with the most difficult.