Learned Overeating: Applying Principles of Pavlovian Conditioning to Overeating

[allgrownup]

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40429-018-0207-x

TLDR;

It takes only a couple of trigger+food associations for your subject to become successfully conditioned on developing an eating reflex when the trigger occurs

While easy to become conditioned to do so, it is very hard for the subject to break the behavior. The "not doing" essentially becomes a second, competing trigger. Even a small slipup, and sometimes just the passage of time, makes the original conditioning return.

So, teaching your subject to associate certain triggers (a situation, a feeling, an emotion, a song, an activity, etc) with certain food or with eating helps you create a perpetual eating situation where your subject will develop cravings when the trigger occurs. 

Doing so will help act as an insurance against diet attempts as this conditioning is very hard to break or get rid of.

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This review provides an overview of recent findings relating to the role of Pavlovian conditioning in food cue reactivity, including its application to overeating and weight loss interventions

Both in the laboratory and in real life, cue-elicited appetitive reactivity (e.g., eating desires) can be easily learned, but (long-term) extinction is more difficult.

Pavlovian learning theory provides a still undervalued theoretical framework of how cravings and overeating can be learned

Although food cue reactivity has a strong genetic component [25], Pavlovian conditioning plays an important role as well. Every time palatable food is consumed, the food can be associated with cues in the internal or external environment, and these cues then promote cue reactivity upon their next encounter. In Pavlovian terms, food entering the digestive system is an unconditioned stimulus (US), and once a cue (conditioned stimulus; CS) has become associated with the US, it can stimulate appetitive responses, i.e., food cue reactivity (conditioned response: CR), which promotes food intake

A consistent finding is that after conditioning, the CS+ (vs. CS−) evokes conditioned responding, as reflected by heightened psychological (e.g., explicit eating expectancies, eating desires, CS+ liking) (e.g., [30, 38, 39], psychophysiological (e.g., salivation) [34•, 35, 40], and behavioral responding (e.g., approach tendencies, place preferences, food intake/choice) (e.g., [30, 36, 37, 41]).

 

You can train -- condition --  people to associate a trigger with a hunger or craving signal.

 

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Findings also suggest that appetitive conditioning usually occurs quickly; in most studies, only 3 to 6 CS–US pairings were sufficient, while one study even reports evidence for successful acquisition after only one CS–US pairing [35].

In laboratory conditions this conditioning can be programmed in as fast as 3-6 pairings of the trigger + food. 

 

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In a recent study, we therefore examined whether appetitive conditioning also occurs under real-life circumstances, using times of day as conditioned stimuli [42•]. Participants were tested over a period of 15 days in their natural environment, using a smartphone application for administering a questionnaire (eating expectancies, eating desires) and for instructing them to consume chocolate provided by the experimenter. At one specific time of day (CS+), participants always received a signal to complete the questionnaire and the instruction to consume chocolate, whereas on another time of day (CS−), participants only completed the questionnaire. Results indicated considerably heightened eating desires and eating expectancies to the chocolate-associated time of day (vs. CS−) from the fifth day forward [42•]. Thus, consistent with the findings of laboratory studies, this study shows that cue-elicited eating desires can be learned with relative ease in the natural environment. Associative learning processes might therefore play a critical role in the experience of many daily eating desires.

In real life settings the same successful conditioning can be observed.

 

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To summarize, food cue reactivity has been shown to be related to overeating and weight gain and can partly be learned through Pavlovian learning principles. Laboratory studies have shown that relatively few CS–US pairings are sufficient to form CS–US associations, and that—consequently—encounters of CSs enhance food cue reactivity.

 

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Given that food cue reactivity is partly learned, it may be reduced through extinction, which refers to the decline in (appetitive) responding with repeated CS–noUS pairings after acquisition [13]. Extinction of appetitive responses in real life can be achieved during a diet: when CSs, such as a chocolate-associated time of day, or watching one’s crisp-associated favorite TV show in the evening, are deliberately no longer followed by food intake (noUS), food cue reactivity (e.g., eating desires) decreases over time. Several laboratory studies have indeed shown that conditioned responses (such as eating expectancies, eating desires) reduce with non-reinforced CS presentations (e.g., [32, 51]). However, studies have also consistently suggested that a complete extinction of eating desires is difficult to achieve: towards the end of extinction, eating desires to the CS+ often remain higher than to the CS− (e.g., [30, 31, 51]—even when experimentally eliminating US expectancies through explicit instructions after acquisition [52]. This difficulty to completely extinguish eating desires might partly explain why it is so difficult to stick to one’s diet.

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In addition, it has been argued that partial (in contrast to continuous) reinforcement of food cues might be frequently practiced by a significant portion of unsuccessful dieters who try to abstain from eating in response to certain food cues but regularly fail [32]. Partial reinforcement is well known to result in slowed extinction of appetitive responses (the partial reinforcement extinction effect)—possibly leading to a greater difficulty to extinguish appetitive responding and hence, more risk of lapses during one’s dieting attempts.

One important characteristic of extinction is that it does not reflect mere “unlearning” of the CS–US relationship; it largely reflects new learning of a second—contextually controlled—inhibitory association (CS–noUS) that competes with the original CS–US association [57]. So, building upon the example of Carl: practicing extinction of not eating crisps while watching the TV show leads to a novel association: namely that the TV show is no longer a predictor of crisps intake (CS–noUS), while the original association between the TV show and crisps intake also remains intact (CS–US). Consistent with this account, a large amount of (mostly animal and some human) data show that after extinction procedures, seemingly extinguished appetitive responses can return under certain conditions—as demonstrated by phenomena such as rapid reacquisition (the rapid return of responding with new CS–US pairings after extinction, e.g., when eating crisps while watching the TV show once after a diet), reinstatement (the return of responding when the US is provided after extinction – e.g., eating crisps again after a diet), renewal (the return of responding after extinction with a change in context, e.g., extinction of evening cravings during a holiday and returning home), and spontaneous recovery (the spontaneous return of responding when time has elapsed after extinction, i.e., after a period of successful dieting) [13, 52, 56].

The ease of conditioned responses to re-emerge after extinction might explain the observation that although a considerable proportion of dieters are able to achieve initial weight loss, only few are able to also successfully maintain their weight loss—most dieters regain the lost weight (or even more) (e.g., [61, 62]).

 

While it is very easy to condition your subject to associate food with a trigger, and to crave or have hunger, it is very hard for the subject to break this association.

What happens when the subject tries to stop the behavior is that a second layer of conditioning is added; "I should not eat when this trigger occurs"

For a short time this can be successful but as the original trigger remains active, even a tiny slip-up (a "cheat day") can make reestablish the original food conditioning trigger. 

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Thus, insights into mechanisms of extinction can explain why diets are often unsuccessful: first, dieters likely experience persistent eating desires even after having successfully refrained from intake for a while due to not reaching (full) extinction (which may be exacerbated by partial reinforcement extinction effects). Such prolonged eating desires could be (too) hard to resist over a longer period of time—promoting lapses in the diet that, in their turn, again strengthen the CS–US association. Second, when dieters finally achieve (partial) extinction of food cue reactivity, responding can easily return, thereby promoting (re)lapse.

There is a good chance this food conditioning is behind many failed diets.

[extra_m13]

yes yes and yes. it is something that happens often and as fa's we should use it in our favor to make our ladies eat their way towards a bigger self. in my case, i have noted that my wife uses it in different situations. when there is a reunion of almost any kind she will most likely over eat, stay at the table, finish her plate, get seconds, have a drink, stay at the table and make room for dessert and get up super stuffed, which is very hot. on vacations or weekends, feeling happy and relaxed we will go into a restaurant and she will eat it all, having to unbotton jeans when getting into the car, i love the sight of it. when she is sad it will be a different kind of eating, kind of ravenous, results are the same and the only bad thing is that while she accepts er curves , she gets really upset when the gain is noticeable and clothes not fit and else... you cannot have it all i guess

[Guest high]

That's when you have to associate getting new clothes with something positive, too. 

[allgrownup]

Mine has very strong associations between vacation/summer and fast food, and "fuck it all" food rewards when she feels bad.

As the study material suggests, she can go on a diet and try to break those triggers but usually she's soon back at it.

It's 2 years now that's she's well over 200 lbs, despite numerous "I have to lose weight" diet attempts in that time.