The Dangers of the Appearance-Driven Diet

By Jenny Chen

The Dangers of the Appearance-Driven Diet

By Jenny Chen

A new study found that when people focus on looks, they’re less tuned in to the body’s signals of hunger and fullness. 一項

新的研究發現，如果人們專注樣貌，就會忽略身體的饑飽信號。Growing up I was terrified of being fat. My mother made disparaging1disparaging毀謗的，輕蔑的。remarks about girls on TV who were slightly chubby2chubby圓胖的，豐滿的。and the teen magazines I read were endlessly obsessed with losing weight. On the eve of my first year in college, I learned of the Freshman 15 in one of those teen magazines—the apparent inevitability that every freshman would gain 15 pounds in their first year in college. I was even more horrified when I arrived at school and found myself facing an endless buffet of desserts and cheesefilled entrees. I suddenly had to rely on my own self-control to stop myself from eating ice cream for breakfast. I didn’t trust myself. I never had.

[2] That’s when I turned to the world of glossy fitness magazines and calorie counting. I put myself on a stricter and stricter diet of endless running and shrinking portion sizes. But that wasn’t always enough—my body started rebelling with gnawing hunger and debilitating exhaustion. Whenever I felt like I was tempted to break my strict regime, I would turn to other people: I would look at people who were thinner than me as inspiration to get even thinner myself, and I would look at people who were bigger than me as inspiration for what not to look like. I became obsessed with appearances.

從小到大我一直害怕變胖。我媽只要在電視上看到稍微胖點兒的女孩，就會冷嘲熱諷幾句，我讀的那些青少年雜志也總是不厭其煩地談論減肥。就在上大學前夕，我從某本青少年雜志上了解到“新生15磅”這樣的說法——每名新生必會在大一那一年增重15磅。來到學校后，我發現這里的甜點和富含奶酪的主菜應有盡有，心中更是恐懼。我這下不得不依靠自制力來阻止自己早餐吃冰激凌了。但我對自己沒信心。我壓根兒就不行。

[2]這時，我轉而求助一本本時尚健身雜志，并開始計算食物卡路里。我對自己的飲食控制越來越嚴格，不斷增加消耗、減少攝入。但這并非就行了——身體開始劇烈反抗，用饑餓感啃噬我，用疲憊感削弱我。每當感覺自己要禁不住誘惑放松標準，我就會求助他人：我會看比我瘦的人，激勵自己要更瘦，還會看比我胖的人，提醒自己不要和他們一樣。我越來越癡迷于保持身材。

[3] Two years later though, things started getting out of control. I had lost so much weight that my advising dean wanted me to take time off of school. When I started trying to recover and eat more I found myself in a nightmarish3nightmarish可怕的，惡夢似的。spiral of binging and purging that I couldn’t get out of. If I couldn’t trust myself with food before, I was actually scared of food now.

[4] New research may give a clue to how things spiraled out of my control, at least in part.

[5] Researchers from the Netherlands published a study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology that suggested that focusing on appearance could affect a person’s sensitivity to their internal satiety cues.

[6] “We found that focusing on how you look may hinder how you listen to your body’s hunger fullness cues and how you adjust your food intake,” said Evelien van de Veer, the paper’s lead author.

[3]不過，兩年后，情況開始失控了。我體重減得太厲害，以至于教務主任讓我休學一段時間。當我努力恢復，試圖多吃些時，卻陷入暴食和清腸的可怕漩渦中無法自拔。如果說以前我是不相信自己能控制吃，現在其實是害怕吃了。

[4]事情怎么就在我身上變得一發不可收拾了？新的研究成果或許能解釋一二。

[5]荷蘭的研究人員在《實驗社會心理學雜志》上發表的一份研究報告稱，專注樣貌會影響一個人對自身內在飽腹感的敏感程度。

[6]“我們發現，專注于自己的樣貌會妨礙一個人傾聽自己身體發出的饑飽信號，進而影響對攝取食物的調整。”報告的第一作者埃韋利恩·范德維爾如是說。

[7] Van de Veer and her team recruited 113 participants and conducted two experiments for their study. In the first experiment, researchers told participants they were participating in a milkshake taste test. They divided the participants into two groups. Both groups were given a milkshake to drink but only one group of participants had a mirror placed on their desk. Within each of these groups, half of the participants drank a high-calorie milkshake while the other half drank a low-calorie milkshake, but they were not told which one they were drinking. Fifteen minutes after the milkshake, the participants were asked to go into a room to watch a movie on a computer. There was a bowl of M&M’s4美國的巧克力豆品牌。placed next to the computer. The researchers found that the participants who drank the high-calorie milkshake while looking at the mirror consistently ate more M&M’s than the participants who drank the milkshake without looking into a mirror.

[8] In the second experiment, researchers tested two groups of female participants. One group came before lunch (the “hungry condition”) and the other half came after eating a filling lunch (the “satiety condition”). Half of the participants in each condition were asked to look at advertisements depicting thin models. They then participated in a cracker taste test, did 15 minutes of a filler task, and then the experimenter told the participants that she would leave the crackers on the table so that they could help themselves if they wanted to. While people in the “hungry condition”ate about the same amount of crackers whether they saw the models or not, research found that those who were in the “satiety condition” tended to eat more crackers if they had looked at the advertisements beforehand.

[7]研究中，范德維爾和她的團隊招募了113名志愿者，進行了兩次實驗。第一次實驗，志愿者被告知參與的是一項奶昔味道測試。志愿者被分成兩組，每組品嘗一種奶昔，不同的是只有一組桌上放了一面鏡子。兩組內部，一半志愿者喝高卡路里奶昔，另一半喝低卡路里奶昔，但沒有人知道自己喝的是哪一種。喝完奶昔15分鐘后，志愿者被要求進入房間在電腦上看電影。電腦旁邊放著一碗M&M’s牛奶巧克力豆。研究人員發現，喝高卡路里奶昔的志愿者中，邊看鏡子邊喝的與沒看鏡子喝的相比，吃的巧克力豆更多，且一貫如此。

[8]第二次實驗，研究人員測試了兩組女性志愿者。一組沒吃午飯（處在饑餓狀態），另一組飽餐了一頓（即處在飽腹狀態）。每組中，一半志愿者被要求觀看描述瘦模特的廣告。隨后，志愿者參與了一項餅干味道測試，15分鐘填一個表，工作人員告訴志愿者，她會把餅干留在桌子上，他們想吃可以自己拿著吃。研究人員發現：處在饑餓狀態的志愿者，不管有沒有看模特廣告，吃的餅干基本一樣多；處在飽腹狀態的志愿者，之前看過廣告的往往吃的餅干更多。

[9] Researchers drew upon past research on self-objectification and distracted eating to explain why people in the experiments were less likely to sense fullness if they were focused on appearance. In a study from 2006, women who were preoccupied with how others perceived their bodies (a state psychologists call self-objectification) were more likely to be distracted and unable to focus on cognitively challenging tasks. Previous studies also found that people who were distracted while eating were less likely to sense their body’s internal satiety cues. Thus, researchers suggested in the study that people did not adjust their intake according to fullness cues if they were focused on appearance because they were distracted from sensing those cues.

[10] Van de Veer said that the experiment was unique because it tested how participants adjust their food intake over two separate episodes of consumption. “A lot of experiments look at the effects of external stimuli on one moment of consumption but we wanted to show there are effects [of focusing on appearance] from one moment to one moment. How you adjust what you eat from moment to moment is important because that makes up your total food intake,” she said.

[9]研究人員利用過去有關自我物化和分神進食的研究來闡釋這兩次實驗的發現，即為什么實驗參與者如果專注于樣貌就不太可能有飽腹感。2006年的一項研究顯示，過于在意他人對自己外表觀感（即心理學家所說的自我物化狀態）的女性更可能注意力不集中，無法專注于具有認知挑戰性的任務。之前的多項研究也發現，那些吃東西時注意力不集中的人，不太可能關注自身的內在飽腹感。因此，研究人員認為，在這一研究中，如果志愿者專注樣貌，就不會根據飽腹感調整攝食，因為他們的注意力被分散，沒有注意飽腹感。

[10]范德維爾表示，他們的實驗是獨一無二的，因為測試了兩種不同的進食情況下，志愿者如何調整自身的食物攝入。范德維爾說：“許多實驗看的是進食的某一刻外部刺激的影響，但我們想表明，專注于樣貌時時刻刻都有影響。如何隨時調整攝食很重要，因為這決定了總體攝食情況。”

[11] Jenni Schaefer, eating disorder activist and author of Life Without Ed5= Eating Disorder。: How One Woman Declared Independence from Her Eating Disorder and How You Can Too, says that this research confirms something that people in the eating-disorder community have known for a long time. “Sometimes you’ll hear people with eating disorders say they’re like a walking dead. There’s really no connection to their hunger and fullness cues,” Schaefer said. “Looking back at my own eating disorder ... I knew when I was really really hungry and I knew when I was really really really really stuffed. But I didn’t know anything about those hunger fullness cues in between the far extremes.”

[12] But the research from the Netherlands doesn’t just apply to people with eating disorders, said Evelyn Tribole, the registered dietitian and nutrition counselor who pioneered the Intuitive Eating program in 1996. Chronic dieters also suffer from the negative impacts of focusing on appearance. “I see this over and over again—people eat according what they think celebrities or fitness models are eating,” Tribole said. “Then they begin to ignore their hunger fullness cues and even stop feeling them after awhile.”

[11]詹尼·謝弗，進食障礙知識的積極推廣者，也是《與進食障礙分手》一書的作者。她認為，范德維爾的研究確證了長期以來在進食障礙群體中眾所周知的一些東西。“有時，你會聽到進食障礙患者說自己好像行尸走肉。根本不知道自己是餓還是飽。”謝弗說，“回顧我自己進食障礙的經歷……我只在餓極了和飽極了的時候有感覺。但在這兩個極端感覺出現之前，我感覺不到饑餓和飽腹。”

[12]但伊夫琳·特里博爾表示，荷蘭研究團隊的這一研究不僅可以適用于進食障礙者。特里博爾是注冊營養師和營養顧問，早在1996年就率先創立了直覺飲食項目。長期節食者也遭受著專注樣貌所帶來的負面影響。“我一次次目睹這樣的情況，人們自以為名人或健美模特都吃些什么，自己就也照著吃。”特里博爾說，“隨后，他們開始忽略身體的饑飽暗示，一段時間之后，甚至根本沒有感覺了。”

[13] Schaefer hopes that this research will prompt the dieting industry to help people break the cycle of endless dieting. “What’s awesome about this study is that maybe the dieting industry will take note of this and help people make lifestyle changes as opposed to just going on diets, and change their marketing from being [based on appearance],” Schaefer said.

[14] However, Evelyn Attia, director of the Center for Eating Disorders at Columbia University, says that it’s unlikely that one study will inspire that kind of sweeping6sweeping徹底的，廣泛的。change.

[15] “I don’t think the verdict is out yet. I’d love to see the study replicated and tested across a variety of foods and images,” she said. “If it turns out that the study can be further substantiated it begins to suggest that outside elements in our environment other than food affects our eating habits.” ■

[13]謝弗希望范德維爾團隊的研究可以促使節食產業幫助人們打破無休止節食的不良循環。她說：“這項研究的好處是，節食產業可能會加以關注，進而幫助人們改變生活方式，而不是一味節食，并改變該行業［基于樣貌］的營銷模式。”

[14]但是，哥倫比亞大學進食障礙研究中心主任伊夫琳·阿蒂亞認為，僅憑一項研究不太可能激發那樣的行業巨變。

[15]“我認為自己的判斷并未過時。我樂見這一研究能夠不斷復制，以各種各樣的食物和影像來驗證。”阿蒂亞說道，“如果這項研究能夠進一步得到證實，那就可以表明，除了食物，環境中的外部因素也會影響我們的飲食習慣。”□

為 貌 擇 食 的 危 險

文/珍妮·陳（音譯） 譯/管利民 審訂/辛勤

（譯者單位：北京市朝陽區委辦）