Table 2.
Perceptions and responses to hunger, satiety, and food cravings.
| Factor | Description | Healthy BMI | Overweight/Obese BMI |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hunger and satiety | Awareness and actions when hunger is experienced | L1: “So I don’t ever really get that hungry cause I’m always kind of, like I’ll take food with me. So I try to avoid getting really hungry because then I know I’ll probably, I might overeat.” L2: “I don’t eat ‘til I’m stuffed so if there is too much food I will, you know, cut it down. I don’t like that feeling of like basically you have to undo your pants.” |
OB7: “I don’t have much patience and I do feel hungry frequently and that is probably a problem. I even, yeah I sometimes think of hunger as being the root of my inability to lose weight and I occasionally glance at the ads for products that are being developed that allege that they address hunger. If I could safely take something or even eat in a certain way that would just make me less hungry during the course of the day I would jump at it…I see hunger as being kind of at the root of the problem, the inability to lose weight.“ FG1OW: “I try and drink water but it never works.” |
| Restraint | Behaviors to prevent overeating | L1: “I don’t buy them all the time, it is a favorite but I just don’t buy it all the time.” L5 (formerly overweight): “I try to eat healthy, so and I have been for a while but, ya know so I try not even to see these foods that like, that taste good um, cause it’s tempting but, um my taste buds gravitate towards croissants and beer and strawberries.” |
OB7: "I try to keep really tempting stuff out of my house and out of my reach.” OB9: "I would’ve circled the donut but I’m trying to lose my belly so I’m refraining from eating donuts.” |
| Disinhibition | Behaviors to enable overeating | L2: “I can indulge a little bit more on the weekends than I do during the week.” L5 (formerly overweight): “I maybe only drink beer maybe once or twice a month. Um, a croissant maybe I’ll have a couple times a month. Um, so just like on a rare occasion. Oh but strawberries I eat that on a regular basis.” |
OW6: “At times I certainly eat too much… you make whatever amount … there is and you just eat it. I think that is very common. And maybe I have an idea in my mind what that should be. So it’s maybe more of my brain than in my stomach.” OB10: “I guess I normally those foods are not available to me so I probably see somebody eating um, like some barbeque ribs so I say to me “I try that” or um some potato chips. “Oh I’ll try some of those” or potato salad, you know, I’ll get a scoop of that. But yeah, I guess I’m influenced by what other people eat.” |
| Cravings | Awareness and actions relating to cravings | L2: “The thing that I really enjoy the most and I don’t buy it because I will eat the whole bag are Cheese Curls. That is my indulgence. I love Cheese Curls!… If I buy them I will only buy a small package because as I said I will eat the whole thing.” L3: “I’ve also allowed myself to indulge more in these healthy, you know, sometimes raspberries can be expensive, I’m not buying any ice cream so um….so I permit myself to indulge in the things that I like.” |
OB10: “I’ll get up and I’ll feel hungry, well not necessarily hungry but I feel like eating something and most of the time it’s not necessarily hungry.” OB8: “Uhhh. Yea, if it’s something I really enjoy, I don’t have to be hungry to eat it. I would just eat it. Not out of need to eat it … like my cottage cheese… So I might go in the fridgerator and grab the tub of cottage cheese and I might sit down there and eat it.” |
| Association between pleasure and food composition | Tension between food perceived as healthy, and food palatability | L3: “I’d say [health] that’s probably primary, that is, within the range of healthy food, then taste, and um for both of us but that is keeping within the range of healthy food… I rarely cook food that I don’t like.” L5 (formerly overweight): “Yeah definitely, I mean if it doesn’t taste good it’s like, I’m really less likely to eat it. So the taste is very important but sometimes I will choose the healthier thing even though, um something else like I know it would taste better, you know what I mean. So that’s kind of tough, um it’s been tough for me to do that.” |
FG1OW: “They’re [selected foods] high sugar, high carbs, all the good stuff.” FG1OW: “Ohhh.You can add that to the unhealthy group. That tastes good.” OW6: “Well there are things I enjoy like pizza I am not eating because I don’t think it is as healthy as I would like it to be.“ |
Representative quotes have been selected from participants with a healthy body mass index (BMI) (interviews), and participants with an overweight or obese BMI (interviews and focus groups).