People with high self-control have a cunning approach to healthy eating

It’s to do with focusing on healthy foods that they actually like If challenged to think of ways to eat more healthily, something like this would probably go through my mind: “Could try to eat more blueberries (but yuk, I don’t like those much), and I suppose I should give up chocolate biscuits (but, erm, never going to happen, they are an essential part of my morning coffee routine)”. According to a new paper in Psychology and Marketing I am showing the typical approach to healthy eating of a person with low self-control and what’s more, my way of thinking is likely to lead me to failure. Meredith David and Kelly Haws conducted two studies with hundreds of undergrad students who were asked to imagine that they were trying to live more healthily and/or lose weight. In the first study, they asked some of the students to list foods they should eat more of to make their diet more healthy, and they asked the others to list foods they should eat less often. Later, each student was presented with his or her list and asked to rate how much they liked each item on it. The students also completed a questionnaire about how much self-control they have in everyday life. The results showed that low and high self-control participants went about this task rather differently. Among the students asked to list healthy food items they should eat more regularly, there was a tendency for the high self-control participants to like the foods on their l...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Health Source Type: blogs