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Best way to stop overeating is to have a carefree attitude towards food, study suggests
When it comes to eating chocolate, researchers say salivating doesnt necessarily indicate desire. The more chocolate you eat in a single sitting, the more you salivate! Its the emotional response to salivation that makes us decide to eat more or not.
You mightve read about cocoas ability to maintain heart health, or vets giving one last chocolatey treat to very good boys& It turns out that relaxing our attitude towards chocolate, and unhealthy snacks in general, and eliminating the negative emotional response that follows feelings of eating-related guilt, might be the best way to help us stop craving them and therefore, potentially, lose weight.
Having a carefree relationship with food may help us cut down on unhealthy eating
Dutch researchers investigating the relationship between how much we salivate when we see chocolate and how much we choose to eat in a single sitting have come up with a curious conclusion.
They gave a small amount of chocolate to healthy-weight individuals in a controlled study. Afterward, participants were invited to eat as much chocolate as they wanted. All you can eat. Opzij gaan, Willy Wonka.
As they ate, their desire to eat decreased. But they didnt stop salivating. In fact, they salivated more. Rather than reflecting actual physiological desire, salivating reflects how sensitive someone is to the sensory experience of eating chocolate.
Based on the study, the researchers concluded that having a carefree relationship with chocolate and, by association, other unhealthy snacks may help regulate its consumption.
This highlights the potential benefits of a relaxed attitude toward food, they add, known as food legalizing.
Eliminating guilt from your diet may help you lose weight
In the context of studies about food, desire, and salivation, food legalizing has nothing to do with the decriminalization of food groups.
Instead, its having a relaxed, worry-free, guilt-free relationship with food. And it may help you lose weight.
According to habituation theory, reads the studys introduction, the emotional intensity of stimuli influences the rate of habituation, with emotional stimuli expected to persist longer than purely sensory ones.
In other words, the way we respond to food emotionally has a big impact on what, and how much, we end up eating.
In the study, the participants who had a carefree attitude towards the chocolate in front of them who didnt feel guilty about the idea of eating it, and didnt respond in a heightened way, emotionally ate less of it.
So next time you embark on a weight-loss journey, remember that taking a punitive attitude towards yourself whenever you digress from it is unlikely to be constructive, or productive. If you stray from the path, don’t beat yourself up about it. Everyone needs a little boost, now and then.
Take a leaf out of Donna and Tom’s book and treat yo’ self.
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