Creatures of Habit: Do You Eat Just Because?
There’s a very famous eatery I go to every time I visit family in Chicago. It’s a part of the nostalgia, so I allow myself this treat knowing full well it’s not the healthiest option calorie-wise. The trouble is, it no longer tastes as good as it once did. The last time I visited my mother-in-law commented mid-meal that the taste had changed. As I took another bite, I had to agree. Yet, before she said something, I was perfectly content with my usual dish. What’s wrong with me? Had I truly become so used to going to this place that I stopped paying attention to the taste of the food? I read the findings of a new study and it seems to corroborate my experience perfectly. In that situation, I was eating purely out of habit.
Stale Popcorn
Published in the November 2011 issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, the study, led by researchers from the University of Southern California, UC-San Diego, and Duke University, conducted two studies on about 100 participants. The first study served up fresh or week-old popcorn to two types of people: one group regularly ate popcorn at the movie theater, while the other did not. In the movie theater, regardless of whether the popcorn was fresh or stale, those who regularly ate movie popcorn ate the same amount of food, while the non-habitual ate less stale popcorn. When participants were presented the same food in a conference room, both habitual and non-habitual popcorn eaters ate less of the stale stuff.
Change Your Environment
Slowing down your cravings for unhealthy food may be as easy as changing where you eat. Brian Wansink, who has studied mindless eating extensively, shared his advice to “mindlessly eat better” with attendees of this past year’s conference of the American Psychological Association saying, “The secret is to change your environment so it works for you rather than against you.” If you’re used to eating in the break room or your desk at work, try some place new. At home, resolve to only eat at a dining table, not a tray table in front of the television. You might also switch to a smaller plate, or stop eating directly out of packaging. Turn off distractions and you may find that you enjoy that peach or plum much more than you do your regular candy bar.
Are You Hungry or is It Lunch Time?
Has your lunch break become as automatic as checking your work email first thing in the morning? Additional findings of the study showed, even when the habitual eaters were less hungry, they ate similar portions of popcorn. The non-habitual eaters ate less. If you can help it, only eat when you’re hungry. This may be difficult for families with children on a tight schedule or those who have to eat lunch at a set time, but your breakfast and snacks are all up to you. Think about ways you can shuffle the time so that you’re not just eating out of habit.
Switch Hands
The second study the researchers conducted had participants use their dominant or non-dominant hand while eating the movie popcorn. Habitual eaters ate less stale popcorn when they used their non-dominant hand. In a press release, co-author of the study, Wendy Wood of USC, had this to say, “It's not always feasible for dieters to avoid or alter the environments in which they typically overeat. More feasible, perhaps, is for dieters to actively disrupt the established patterns of how they eat through simple techniques, such as switching the hand they use to eat.” It might get messy, but I think I’ll be testing out my left hand fork skills when I go back to Chicago.
Your thoughts…
How have you changed your environment to control overeating and stop eating out of habit?
Comments
Creatures of habit just nails it. We can't even imagine how many things we "just do" to figure out that we "just do" them. Eating is one of the biggest. Spending is another.
We have a bear full of honey on our kitchen counter. I would always at least shoot some honey onto a spoon and lick it off. It seemed like the little honey bear used to call out to me when I walked past. Now that I've change my eating habits, I looked at that bear this morning and moved him into the cupboard. He doesn't have a place in my eating/craving life anymore.
oh yeah baby if it is there it won't be for long :)
I have a terrible time with snacking on long trips...think it is the boredom. Not sure how to overcome this. Fortunately, I don't make a lot of long driving trips.
It a habit for me to buy a bag of popcorn from the Target food court while shopping. I do this almost every time I go into the store. Turns out this Target store habit costs me 300 calories!
After reading this article, I am going to consciously end this practice.
Thank you for the heads up.
I enjoy going to a local Texas Road House resaurant, where they cook and prepare everything in house, even the salad dressings. I always like going there and due to some economic lean times had not gone there for awhile. I was actually craving for the experience, and finally went not too long ago. While I enjoyed myself, and the food was good, there was a certain, let down, experience, maybe because of my reliance on home cooked healthy foods for so long, there wasn't that big a difference. Eating out had been a form of entertainment for me for so long that I think the residual effects have finally calmed down, and I enjoy the company more than the food, which is a good thing.
maybe just snack on something more healthy. veggies, low cal -fat crackers or chips, just make a change:)
Good article but wait.....don't eat if you're not hungry? Including breakfast?
Others tell me I have to eat breakfast, hungry or not. I'm rarely hungry in the morning, so I've been forcing myself to eat an egg & toast or cereal and milk. I don't have to do that?
From my understanding of what I have read about why breakfast is important to eat, is because it gets your metabolism going. I should say a well balanced breakfast.
Obviously, the esteemed researchers didn't realize that true popcorn fanatics are going to eat it stale or fresh. As a fanatic, fresh is better, but stale if there was nothing else when I wanted popcorn, would do.
When I eat out, I eat at places I enjoy the food and it is something we do not prepare or prepare very rarely at home. If the food is better/worse than I remember it is because preparation was better/worse. One of the hard parts has been that one of my favorite local establishments is Thai, which is hard to do when one is on Atkins.
I have a bad habit of late night eating, it's like i have to eat something before I got to bed. So now in stead of cookies or cereal. I have carrots and hummus or chips and salsa, or just drink some water. Or if I crave something sweet I'll have an apple or banana or a weight watchers snackk and skim milk.
makes sence...that's how I quit smoking. Changed jobs, changed city, and it turned out to be the perfect time to quit smoking.
I've noticed that no matter what size the slice of pizza or how hungry I am I always eat 2 slices...sometimes I am stuffed afterwards but I have not been able to change my mindset and continue to eat two.
Remembering some good friends I have lost & realize some things are more important than being thin. Guess this is not the right forum for this...
Original Post by: tryin2bperfect
Mines is really weird... I always like to binge; especially before bed. It's a really bad routine. The worst thing is that I despise the feeling of being full before bed; it gets me so frustrated with myself...I really dont know what to do; I hope this calorie count really helps me. Anyone have any other suggestions???
I battle with this too! Three things I do to help:
After dinner, I immediately put a piece of sugar-free gum in my mouth. It helps get rid of the food-taste I had in my mouth that kept me craving more.
I brush my teeth shortly after dinner - usually about half hour after. I feel gross about brushing teeth and then eating, and so it prevents me from snacking.
If I am really craving something, I get out just what I'm going to eat, and after I eat it, I make myself wait 20 minutes before I eat again. Usually I'll just forget, or in 20 minutes I'm actually feeling full.
Doesn't work every night, but most of them :)
I always save enough calories for a low-calorie treat at night - either a skinny cow ice cream sandwich, or weight watchers fudge bar - something like that. I eat that slowly and enjoy after I've put my daughter to bed.
Original Post by: smithteamracing
OMG me too, love pizza. Usually, it is Costco's cheese, but also love chicken veggie ranch. Some things you just can't give up. As I approach 60 I realize some things are just to good to give up so I will enjoy them occasionally.
Remembering some good friends I have lost & realize some things are more important than being thin. Guess this is not the right forum for this...
Should be perfectly right for this forum. Get close, keep it close to goal and enjoy life. BMI is not a good index, really. Get to the weight you want and feel comfortable with. I've given up a lot of foods I really like on my trek to my goal. The goal includes allowance for upward bounce when I start eating them again.
I'm 65 and life is to short to worry about not keeping some magic weight number. I've lost about 100 in the last year, plan to lose another ~50 because I've set a loss goal. Although I've had almost zero deviations from the Atkins diet, other than two ears of sweet corn per week this summer, I'm not going into shock if I do fall off the wagon and land into a big bowl of rice.
I used to eat mindlessly, just because I enjoy eating. Whenever I would go to a buffet I ate at least 4 meals and not even blink. Now that I have to log everything and work towards goals, I changed my eating habits so I actually have to think about what's going in my body. I also spend a lot more time in stores looking at ingredients and picking the best foods.
Original Post by: tryin2bperfect
Mines is really weird... I always like to binge; especially before bed. It's a really bad routine. The worst thing is that I despise the feeling of being full before bed; it gets me so frustrated with myself...I really dont know what to do; I hope this calorie count really helps me. Anyone have any other suggestions???
I have had problems with that too. I've started filling up a large glass of water with a squeeze of lemon or lime in it and whenever I get the urge to snack I drink instead. So far it's been working pretty well for me.
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Another good article, Carolyn. Ironically, I noticed this yesterday. I had a business meeting in a nearby city at 10:00 and my body required food at around noon, so I stopped and picked up a healthy snack, and then another, and so forth. It was a 2-hour drive to and 2 hours back to the office.
I did not exceed my normal calorie intake during the drive and I felt satiated. When I arrived back at the office at about 2:00 PM, I was no longer hungry, but my routine is to go to a certain place to lunch daily and consume a certain number of calories in a certain food. Even though I was no longer hungry, I proceeded to that routine location and consumed the same routine calorie intake.
I was conscious of the fact that I was no longer hungry, and conscious of the fact that I had already consumed my healthy caloric requirement, and given the choice between hunger and habit, habit won.
Thank you for the reminder.