Day 173: On Eating Alon
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Meals eaten with one other person present were 33% larger than meals eaten alone, whereas 47%, 58%, 69%, 70%, 72%, and 96% increases were associated with two, three, four, five, six, and seven or more people present, respectively.
Here’s a super simple way to improve your self-control when eating: eat alone. When people eat with others, they eat more — and the greater the number of people who share the meal with you, the more you eat.
However, studies suggest that this phenomenon isn’t related to the amount of time spent eating.
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It’s the companionship in itself that makes humans more likely to eat more when they are around other people than when alone. The same happens with animals. With chickens, for example, a full chicken will continue eating if a hungry chicken starts eating with it.
If you’re currently on a diet and you frequently have a bite with other people, ask yourself how important it is for you to spend time eating with them. Perhaps you could forego or reduce the number of shared meals while you’re on a diet and find a different activity that you could do together.
Sometimes such simple tweaks can quickly produce big results, so give it a go for at least a few weeks and see whether it can help you achieve your goals more quickly.