The study was designed to evaluate the effects of traditional versus biobehavioral information about dieting among individuals in early stages of dieting behavior. Forty-eight participants were presented with a message emphasizing the traditional information that weight loss is only a matter of will-power. Forty-eight participants were presented with biobehavioral information that explained why dieting is often ineffective and that other approaches could be used constructively to achieve weight loss. Twenty-four participants received a control message that was unrelated to weight loss. The biobehavioral message was expected to result in decreases in self-blaming attributions. This was true only for those participants that had been overweight since childhood Six current books on weight loss written from a Christian perspective are reviewed based upon the results of the study.
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