“Although self-control is typically viewed as a battle between willpower and desire, consumers can’t rely entirely on willpower to control their eating. They also need to create situations that will make them lose interest in food<\/strong>. One way is to keep better track of the quantity of unhealthy foods they eat,” write authors Joseph P. Redden (University of Minnesota) and Kelly L. Haws (Texas A&M University).<\/p>\n Some consumers are able to exercise great self-control when it comes to their diets while millions of others can’t<\/strong> seem to stop overindulging on unhealthy foods such as cookies and candies. Do the former have more willpower? Or are they simply satisfied more quickly?<\/p>\n In a series of studies, the authors found that consumers who successfully control their diets eat fewer unhealthy foods because they are satisfied sooner<\/strong>. They also found that many consumers with poor self-control were able to establish greater control when they paid close attention to the quantities of unhealthy foods they consumed because simply paying attention made them more quickly satisfied.<\/p>\n In one interesting study, a group of consumers were asked to eat either a healthy or an unhealthy snack. Some of the consumers were asked to count how many times they swallowed while eating the snack<\/strong>. Consumers who counted the number of times they swallowed were satisfied more quickly even if they otherwise had a low level of self-control. Monitoring how much they ate made consumers with low self-control behave like those with high self-control.<\/p>\n “Dieters should focus on the quantity of unhealthy foods but not the quantity of healthy foods<\/strong>. Monitoring healthy foods could actually be counterproductive to the goal of eating a healthier diet. So the secret to success is knowing when to monitor your eating,” the authors conclude.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the University of Chicago Press Journals press release via ScienceDaily: Consumers watching their diet should pay close attention to the amount of unhealthy foods they eat, but can relax… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[208,12],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6414"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6414"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6530,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6414\/revisions\/6530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Buffet\"](\"http:\/\/www.therapytoronto.ca\/images\/blogpics\/Food.jpg\")
Consumers watching their diet should pay close attention to the amount of unhealthy foods they eat, but can relax when it comes to healthier options<\/strong>, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research<\/em>.<\/p>\n