Self-Regulation, Motivation, and Psychosocial Factors in Weight Management
1Department of Sports and Health, Faculty of Human Kinetics, Technical University of Lisbon, 1495-688 Cruz Quebrada, Portugal
2Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, CT 06269, USA
3Department of Food Science and Nutrition, Laval University, QC, Canada G1V 0A6
4Department of Psychology, University of Basel, 4003 Basel, Switzerland
5Departments of Medicine and Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology, Center for Community Health, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627, USA
Self-Regulation, Motivation, and Psychosocial Factors in Weight Management
Description
In most environments and physiological conditions, behaviors related to body weight regulation are within the reach of voluntary control and regulation. Variables associated with the volitional regulation of those behaviors such as psychosocial and other factors that may affect motivation, can be identified and manipulated to advance the understanding of etiology, prevention, and reversal of overweight/obesity, particularly at the level of the individual. The motivational underpinnings of automatic routines or habits with low level of conscious regulation can also be explored with implications for behavior change. Obesity research can clearly benefit from a more in-depth understanding of these variables, which can potentially be translated into clinical and even public health interventions.
We invite original contributions pertaining to motivational and self-regulatory psychosocial factors in obesity, in the form of empirical research, review and methodological papers, or commentaries, that advance current and future research and practice. We are particularly interested in research focused on long-term weight loss maintenance. Studies may explore the dimensions of cognition, executive function, behavioral skills/plans, perceptions and attributions, mood and affect, psychological needs, personality factors, quality of life, social/clinical climate, perceived norms and bias, habit formation, and other aspects. Studies may employ explicit as well as implicit measures and may also focus on behavioral techniques per se, especially if the associated psychological processes are also explored. All contributions for this special issue must be directly relevant to human weight control. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
- Motivational and self-regulatory consequences of incentives, environmental changes or “nudges,” social comparison, bias and discrimination, or body image
- The role of individual motivation in weight control (e.g., quantity versus quality or motivation, weight loss motives, life aspirations, etc.)
- Daily fluctuations in motivation/self-regulation or in psychological states related to eating or activity/inactivity behaviors
- Approaches with an explicit reduced focus on actual body weight change (e.g., “health at every size” programs)
- Translational research focused on promoting self-regulation of body weight
- Self-regulation of discrete sedentary, activity, and dietary behaviors/patterns (e.g. breakfast, sitting time)
- Impact of obese persons' own perceptions regarding obesity and weight control
Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jobes/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/ according to the following timetable: