Chapter 33 — Exercises

Three tiers. 🚪 threshold; 🔄 retrieval; 🪞 reflection.

⚠️ A note before you start. Several of these ask you to observe your own eating. Observe — do not restrict, count or judge. ⚠️ If self-monitoring is difficult or distressing for you, do the analytical exercises and skip the logs. That is a legitimate way to complete this chapter, and Chapter 34 explains why.

Tier 1 — Recall and Comprehension

R1. 🚪 ⚠️ State the threshold concept in one sentence. Then state the SECOND half of it — the part about which system diets fight — and explain why the second half is the one people miss.

R2. ⚠️ Name five homeostatic signals and what each does. Distinguish SATIATION from SATIETY with an example of something that produces one and not the other.

R3. ⚠️ After weight loss, what changes more — appetite or metabolic rate? For how long? (Ch 24 §24.5.)

R4. ⚠️ Distinguish WANTING from LIKING. Different substrates, different behaviour. ⚠️ Why does "I didn't even enjoy it" count as accurate rather than irrational?

R5. ⚠️ Name the five drivers of wanting in §33.2. Which one is conspicuously absent from the list, and why does that matter?

R6. ⚠️ What is sensory-specific satiety? Explain dessert, and explain buffets.

R7. ⚠️ Give §33.3's four rows. ⚠️ Which two are the error, and in which directions?

R8. ⚠️ What is the diagnostic question the chapter recommends, and what question does it REPLACE? Why is the replaced one unanswerable in the moment?

R9. ⚠️ According to §33.4, what is Chapter 31's bad-night plan actually an intervention on? And the shopping list?

R10. ⚠️ Describe the Minnesota Starvation Experiment and its findings. ⚠️ Why does it matter that the participants were screened and healthy?

R11. ⚠️ Give §33.6's six-step cycle. ⚠️ Which step is load-bearing, and why?

R12. ⚠️ How does food insecurity run the same cycle? (Ch 32 §32.10.)

R13. ⚠️ Give the three child-feeding interventions in §33.6b and what each actually produces. ⚠️ State the division of responsibility.

R14. ⚠️ Name the four things called "emotional eating." ⚠️ Which is clinical, and which two are normal?

R15. ⚠️ What are the three components of a habit, and the five things that work on habits? ⚠️ What is wrong with the 21-day figure?

R16. ⚠️ Give the four arguments against the magnesium-craving claim. ⚠️ What is the one clear case of a genuine nutrient-specific appetite?

R17. ⚠️ Name the three effects of eating with other people. ⚠️ Why can "eating with others makes you eat more" and "…eat better" both be true?

R18. ⚠️ What does §33.10 say intuitive eating is good for, and what is it weak against? ⚠️ Which premise does the chapter doubt?

R19. ⚠️ Give alcohol's three separate effects. ⚠️ Why does §33.11 call sleep the best effort-to-effect intervention in the chapter?

R20. ⚠️ In §33.13's table of thirteen, how many work by changing the situation rather than the person? What is the chapter's argument from that number?

Tier 2 — Application

A1. 🔄 🚪 ⚠️ Sort by system. For each, say whether it is homeostatic, hedonic, or the §33.6 cycle — and give the correct tool.

a) ⚠️ Ate a full dinner, ate dessert anyway. b) ⚠️ Skipped lunch, ate a large amount at 19:00. c) ⚠️ Eats the same snack at the same time every evening, reports low enjoyment. d) ⚠️ Restricts all day, eats a large amount at night, distressed afterwards. e) ⚠️ Eats more at parties than alone. f) ⚠️ Craves a specific food during a stressful week.

A2. ⚠️ The cue hunt. One week. Log every unplanned eating occasion with: time, context, what started it, wanting 1–10, liking 1–10.

a) ⚠️ What proportion were cue-initiated? b) ⚠️ Is there a repeated window? What happens immediately BEFORE it? c) ⚠️ Do your wanting and liking scores diverge anywhere?

A3. 🚪 ⚠️ Rewrite the advice. Take five pieces of eating advice you have received. For each:

A4. ⚠️ Design the intervention. Someone eats well all day and eats a large amount in front of the television every evening.

a) ⚠️ What do you need to know before recommending anything? Ask three questions. b) ⚠️ Design the intervention for each possible answer. c) ⚠️ What do you deliberately NOT change?

A5. ⚠️ The child-feeding audit. Watch a family meal, or recall one.

a) ⚠️ Count restrictions, pressures and food-as-reward. b) ⚠️ Predict the effect of each using §33.6b. c) ⚠️ Rewrite the meal using the division of responsibility. What does the adult find hardest?

A6. ⚠️ The household modelling problem. §33.9b.

a) ⚠️ Who else eats with you, and how does what they eat affect what you eat? b) ⚠️ Try to change one thing about your own eating for a week without changing anything about theirs. Record what happened.

Tier 3 — Analysis and Synthesis

S1. 🚪 ⚠️ The threshold applied backwards. Go back through Parts IV and V and find three recommendations that now look different.

a) ⚠️ Which system was each addressing? b) ⚠️ Was it the right one? c) ⚠️ Does any recommendation in this book commit §33.3's error? Be specific and be critical.

S2. ⚠️ The replication problem. §33.14 concedes the behavioural nutrition literature replicates poorly, including a major retraction.

a) ⚠️ How should a textbook handle a field with that record? b) ⚠️ Which claims in this chapter would you downgrade further? c) ⚠️ Does the threshold itself depend on any of the shaky findings? Check.

S3. ⚠️ Willpower. §33.12 argues it is the wrong unit of analysis and deliberately does not rest on ego depletion.

a) ⚠️ Reconstruct the argument WITHOUT the depletion literature. Does it hold? b) ⚠️ "They are not winning more fights, they are having fewer." Is that testable? How? c) ⚠️ Does this framing remove agency? The chapter says no. Assess that.

S4. ⚠️ Intuitive eating. §33.10 calls it right for some problems and wrong for others.

a) ⚠️ Steelman the position that everyone has reliable internal cues to return to. b) ⚠️ Steelman the objection. c) ⚠️ Design a study that would settle it. What is your outcome?

S5. ⚠️ The three-person problem. Case Study 2.

a) ⚠️ Two questions separated three mechanisms. Could a book, an app or an article ask them? b) ⚠️ What are the consequences of scaled advice that cannot? c) ⚠️ Write the three-sentence version of this chapter that would be safe to give to all three people.

S6. 🔄 ⚠️ The four promises. Chapter 32's closing paragraph promised this chapter would explain four things.

a) ⚠️ Why the bad-night plan works. b) ⚠️ Why the food environment matters more than intention. c) ⚠️ Why restriction produces preoccupation. d) ⚠️ Why "just eat less" has failed as advice for as long as it has been given.

⚠️ Answer all four in your own words, in under 100 words each, citing the section.

🪞 Reflection

M1. 🚪 ⚠️ Before this chapter, how did you explain your own eating when it didn't match your intentions? What did you conclude about yourself? ⚠️ Does the two-system framing change that conclusion, and does the change feel like relief or like an excuse?

M2. ⚠️ §33.2's wanting/liking split. Can you name a food you want more than you enjoy? How long have you known that, and what did you previously make of it?

M3. ⚠️ §33.6b's child-feeding section. What was done to you at the table as a child? ⚠️ Can you see any of it still running?

M4. ⚠️ §33.7 asks what your eating might be DOING. Answer honestly for one pattern. ⚠️ If the answer is "it's the only reliably pleasant twenty minutes in the day," what does that tell you — about the eating, or about the day?

M5. 🔄 ⚠️ §33.12 says the people who look disciplined are having fewer fights, not winning more. Who do you think of as disciplined? ⚠️ What do you actually know about their situation, as opposed to their character?