The Behavioral Model of Weight Control

The Behavioral Model of Weight Control
The behavioral treatment of obesity depart drastically from alternative form of treatment such as special diets, drugs, or surgery in that the goal is to alter to obese person’s eating and activity habits. The emphasis is on changing behavior, or more broadly conceived, the obese person life-style. No particular diet is prescribed beyond recommending a balanced and nutritionally sound diet. Put bluntly, it is emphasized that a calories is a calories- and they all count! There is no convincing evidence that the composition of the food one eat will differentially affect weight control, provided the total number of calories is keep consistent. When the weight such as Atkins (1977) low-carbohydrate diet, in which unlimited amount of protein and fats are allowed, do produce weight loss, it is because the dutiful dieter’s total calories intake is reduce and not because of any metabolic magic. Excluding other categories of food, like protein or fat, as some or other diets do is likely to similar effect. In short, diets often appear to work because they directly bring about a temporary change in eating habits and overall food intake. The problem with these diets, of course, is that inevitably, dieters go off their diets and rapidly regain the weight they lost. This cyclical pattern of rapid weight loss followed by weight gain is the typical experience of the obese person who has fought the battle of the bulge. It has been referred to somewhat sardonically as the “rhythm method of girth control.”
In contrast to the illusory promise of a “quick fix” that is offered by most miracle diets, the behavioral approach is geared to slow but weight loss of roughly one to two pounds per week as a direct result of fundamental changes in eating and activity patterns. It is emphasized that there are no quick and simple solutions to permanent weight loss and that success in controlling weight involves a major, long-term commitment on the part of the person in which his or her active cooperation is a must. Without this motivation and commitment, there can be little realistic hope of lasting weight loss.
In term of behavioral approach to weight control, whatever is root cause, obesity is viewed as ultimately a function of number of calories consumed and expanded. The overall goal is to restrict calories consumption and to increase the expenditure of calories through physical activity, thereby producing a negative energy balance and weight loss. Here are marked individual differences in how much and how fast different obese people will loss weight under those conditions, because of the important influence of genetic and biological factors in the regulation of body weight (Wooley, Wooley, & Dyrenforth, 1979). It maybe in certain cases of obesity, particularly extreme obesity, biological determinants are such that they cannot (or should not) be modified along typical behavioral lines. In general, however, the emphasis on behavioral change need not be incompatible with biological considerations, although as I indicate below, the therapist should be alert at all times to the potential limiting influence of biological factors on behavioral weight control programs.

By:G.Terence Wilson
The Addictive Behavior, 209p-210p