An explanation for the failure of dieting is the use of the boundary model. This model states that when you are on a diet, the dieter restrains themselves and therefore become much hungrier, they then set themselves an imposed, unreasonable diet boundary, once they have exceed this, the dieter then tends to eat to a higher level of satiety due to this restraint. Overeating then occurs as a result of this and then becomes the problem when it comes to failure of dieting. This means that a main reason for failure of diets is due to the dietary restraint that is inflicted, resulting in overeating and therefore weight gain and failure of a diet.
There is research to support the boundary model. The research suggests that excessive restraint when on a diet can lead to overeating and therefore failure of dieting. Wardle and Beales conducted a study to test the restraint theory, where they put 27 obese women randomly into either a diet group where they were restraining their eating, an exercise group and a non-treatment group for seven weeks. They were assessed at week four and week six under lab conditions. Their results found that at both the assessment sessions, women in the restraint group ate more than the women in the other two groups. This shows us that excessive restraint when on a diet, leads to overeating and therefore failure of a diet.
When applying failure to diet into the real world, we find implications with obesity diet resolutions. When obese people attempt to diet it has been found by Odgen that their diets fail which may be a consequence of the fact that they are told to restrain their eating rather than learning how to substitute healthier options of foods into their diets. This means that we have clear evidence from the real world that retraining your food intake when attempting to diet is an ineffective way to diet due to the fact it leads to failure of that