According to the World Health Organization, worldwide obesity has nearly doubled since 1980, while 65% of the world’s population live in countries where overweight issues and obesity kill more people than being underweight.
Still, even in today’s world, with its abundance of food, some people manage to stay slim. Why are they able to do that? What’s different about their behaviour? Psychologists are interested in such questions. Knowing the answer would make it possible to use the success formulas of the slim to help those worried about their excess weight. Preventive means could be found as well, enabling one to do something before the bloated waist makes overeating evident.
Being slim has certain advantages over being overweight in health and in fashion, as shown in the caricature “Following the Fashion” by James Gillray in 1794. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons
Uku Vainik, a doctoral student of psychology at the University of Tartu, is studying mental factors that influence people’s eating behaviours. An analysis by Vainik and his colleagues from Montreal, published in the Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews journal, demonstrated that self-control and food-related motivation are the main mechanisms that regulate eating. Memory in general, as well as linguistic abilities, have no importance when it comes to eating. Continue reading
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