What You Can Change _. And What You Can't - Martin E. Seligman [155]
14. G. Blackburn, G. Wilson, B. Kanders, et al., “Weight-cycling: The Experience of Human Dieters,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 49 (1989): 1105–9; E. Drenick and D. Johnson, “Weight-Reduction by Fasting and Semi-Starvation in Morbid Obesity: Long-term Follow-up,” in G. Bray, ed., Obesity: Comparative Methods of Weight Control (London: John Libbey, 1980), 25–34; C. Geissler, D. Miller, and M. Shah, “The Daily Metabolic Rate of the Post-Obese and the Lean,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 45 (1987): 914–20.
I do not believe that the human literature on this issue is yet conclusive. The rat literature and the human literature have replicated increased metabolic efficiency during starvation and dieting. But what happens after weight is regained is less certain: I would like to see replications of whether weight overshoots to higher levels in rats and humans. I would also like to see a longitudinal study with long-term follow-up looking at metabolic efficiency after weight regain along the lines of the cross-sectional study of Geissler et al., “The Daily Metabolic Rate.” See also Garner and Wooley, “Confront the Failure of Behavioral and Dietary Treatments.”
15. Geissler et al., “The Daily Metabolic Rate;” Blackburn et al., “Weight-cycling.”
16. P. Brown and M. Konner, “An Anthropological Perspective on Obesity,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 499 (1987): 29–46.
17. E. Sims, “Experimental Obesity, Diet-Induced Thermogenesis, and Their Clinical Implications,” Clinics in Endocrinology and Metabolism 5 (1976): 377–95.
18. Sims, “Experimental Obesity;” A. Stunkard, J. Harris, N. Pedersen, and G. McClearn, “The Body-Mass Index of Twins Who Have Been Reared Apart,” New England Journal of Medicine 322 (1990): 1483–87; A. Stunkard, T. Sorenson, C. Hanis, et al., “An Adoption Study of Human Obesity,” New England Journal of Medicine 314 (1986): 193–98. The correlation is stronger for the lean than for the obese, indicating that environmental factors may play more of a role in obesity. See R. Price and A. Stunkard, “Commingling Analysis of Obesity in Twins,” Human Heredity 39 (1989): 121–35; C. Bouchard, A. Tremblay, J. Despres, et al., “The Response to Long-term Overfeeding in Identical Twins,” New England Journal of Medicine 322 (1990): 1477–82. For the relation between “ideal” weight and actual weight, see A. Keys, “Overweight, Obesity, Coronary Heart Disease and Mortality,” Nutrition Reviews 38 (1980): 297–307.
19. The best prevalence statistics come from C. Fairburn and S. Beglin, “Studies of the Epidemiology of Bulimia Nervosa,” American Journal of Psychiatry 147 (1990): 401–8.
20. Antidepressant drugs have some positive effects. They do better than a placebo at reducing binging and purging, with about a 60 percent reduction in frequency. But most patients still have the symptoms at the end of treatment, with only 22 percent, on average, symptom free. Once antidepressants are stopped, rate of relapse is very high. For a review of the antidepressants in bulimia, see C. Fairburn, W. S. Agras, and G. T. Wilson, “The Research on the Treatment of Bulimia Nervosa: Practical and Theoretical Implications,” in G. Anderson and S. Kennedy, eds., The Biology of Feast and Famine: Relevance to Eating Disorders (New York: Academic Press, 1992), 318–40.
21. This is not an original proposal. It is the interpretation put forward by Polivy and Herman in Breaking the Diet Habit, Garner and Wooley in “Confront the Failure of Behavioral and Dietary Treatments,” and Jane Wardle. See particularly J. Polivy and C. P. Herman, “Dieting and Binging: A Causal Analysis,” American Psychologist 40 (1985): 193–201; and J. Wardle, “Compulsive Eating and Dietary Restraint,” British Journal of Clinical Psychology 26 (1987): 47–55.
In putting forward a similar theory both of anorexia and bulimia, Peter Slade calls the bulimic a “failed anorexic,” failed in that the anorexic can keep dieting without giving in to binging. See