“Whenever I need to lose £ 5 right away, I try to eat with M,” a friend told me. Our common friend, M, is underweight at least 15 pounds and shows that she was full after eating less than a quarter of the food on her plate. Was known for being. “We had a long weekend,” continued her friend. “And I continued her bite for three days. I think I lost one pound a day. Of course I regained my weight, but that’s what I have to wear for the wedding I was able to wear a dress. “
Not only was my friend’s experience unique, but it was studied in a laboratory setting to measure the social impact of calorie and energy intake compared to a single diet. Studies show that individuals may continue or stop eating, relying on clues from others. Dessert ordering, sharing, and skipping are familiar examples of how other people’s eating behavior affects our diet. I know that when dining with a self-aware chocolate-loving couple, the chocolate desserts they share will probably be ordered. Other friends and family don’t even think about eating something after the main course.
However, the impact of eating with others on our food choices is more complex than whether we eat desserts. It often depends on the degree of familiarity with our dietary companions. According to a study by Hetherington and his colleagues, energy intake increased by 18% when an individual was eating with a friend, but not at all when eating with a stranger. Snack food marketing shows this. The accompanying snack food and beverage ads show that a group of friends are “enjoying” eating and drinking. This is especially true in the weeks leading up to major sporting events on television. Ads typically include a group of people who flock or snuggle up on a couch eating high-calorie snack foods. Also, some people may eat snacks while watching TV alone, but those who watch TV have lower calorie intake than when they are eating with others (14%). I understand.
However, eating with others inevitably affects what we eat and how much we eat. The impact of others on our dietary behavior depends in part on our relationship with them, that is, whether we allow them to influence our food choices. Higgs and Thomas find in their report on how our diet is affected by social factors that it depends on how relevant others’ diets are to us. Did. When my friend wanted to lose weight, M’s diet was appropriate. But the rest of the time didn’t affect her at all.
A notable example of the impact of social groups modeling the diet of new members of the group can be seen in the film, A devil wearing Prada. Anne Hathaway, a beginner in fashion magazine staff, goes out for lunch with fellow employees. She is hungry and she orders burgers and french fries. Others look at her like a cannibal and order a salad without her dressing. You can see the message immediately. If you work in the fashion industry, you don’t eat like a normal hungry person. And a relative of a young woman told me that she noticed that her classmates had different meals when the man was at the table in the college cafeteria and when only the woman was eating together. “I used to eat normally when there were only women at the table, but when there were men, my classmates tended to eat very little. When I ate a normal size meal, men were fat. You might have thought that you would get fat or you would get fat. ”
Don’t imagine relying on the quiet bullying that Hathaway characters have experienced, or criticizing classmates for eating food to change their food choices. There are positive ways in which social conditions can affect eating behavior. Especially when someone is trying to lose weight, that is, a dietary companion.
A dietary companion is someone who eats a wise and healthy diet, and may, for example, be able to influence the diet of those who are trying to lose weight by making better diet choices. Having such a diet companion is still highly avoided in the first weeks of the diet, which makes it difficult for dieters to adapt to the new diet, and after a few weeks of boredom, discouragement in weight loss rates, and still highly. You start to get impatient with paying attention to high-calorie foods, or potion sizes, which are most helpful when you have to be frustrated. By sharing meal times with fellow dieters, dieters can gain access to those who are accustomed to choosing healthy foods without scrutinizing potion size or avoiding so-called consumption. After a diet that eliminates banned ingredients like butter, or essential nutrients such as carbohydrates. Eating buddies are, in a sense, a model of how to integrate a healthy diet into your life without taking it over. The analogy is someone who exercises often but is not obsessed with it, succeeds in incorporating some physical activity into their daily lives, and draws joy from doing so.
M, the woman my friend eats with when he wants to lose weight is not a proper dietary companion because of her extreme diet or lack of it (although she is not anorexic). My friends consume normal amounts of food, sometimes eat carbohydrates and desserts (shared), consume alcohol sparingly but allow them to drink, and with others who avoid eating that food It will help her quest to lose weight by eating. High in calories (fried clams, cream soup, well-dressed lobster rolls, coffee topping with whipped cream).
Perhaps one of the reasons many of us are obese is that there are too many binge eating people that imitate our eating behavior. Many who were social smokers quit when smoking became socially unacceptable and smokers began to stand outside and smoke. Smoking cessation has become a new common sense.
So if you “hang out” with a companion who eats salads, fruits, lean protein, low-fat or non-fat carbs, and calcium-rich dairy products and they don’t feel stressed about it, then eating that way is me. New normal for many of us.
