Success or failure in weight loss depends as much on how you eat as on what you eat. Poor eating habits can induce overeating or increase the likelihood of choosing high-calorie foods.
According to the medical community Monday, a study published in the latest issue of the journal Frontiers in Psychology found that eating while using a smartphone causes the frontal lobe to respond to stimuli other than food, weakening the function that controls intake. An imbalance in the dopamine and serotonin regulation systems also clouds cognitive judgment.
The same applies to television or tablets. When the eyes are fixed on a screen, it becomes difficult to sense how much one has eaten, and even with the same diet, one ends up consuming more than when eating without a screen.
When you eat also directly affects weight. A meta-analysis of 34 papers dealing with the link between irregular eating patterns and weight and metabolic syndrome found that people with erratic meal times were more likely to choose high-calorie foods than those with consistent meal times.
The more irregular breakfast is, the more sugar and alcohol intake increases, and the frequency of reaching for high-calorie snacks instead of meals also rises. When the eating rhythm collapses, it does not stop at reduced metabolic efficiency. The balance of hormones directly tied to blood sugar regulation, such as insulin, leptin, glucagon and adiponectin, is shaken across the board.
Who you eat with is also a variable. The journal Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction reported that after analyzing 38 million food purchase records at a Swiss university campus, people who dined with companions who had balanced eating habits showed a clear tendency to choose healthy foods.
Researchers from the psychology departments of the University of Liverpool and the University of Birmingham in the U.K. analyzed that this phenomenon appears in both adults and children. This is because others' food choices act as a behavioral reference point, and eating habits themselves function as a signal revealing social belonging or identity.
This conformity effect can work either to increase healthy food consumption or to encourage fast food intake.
