Healthy Eating: Try Out This Simple Yet Scientifically Proven Trick To Avoid Junk Food

Making healthy food choices is key to remaining healthy and maintaining healthy body weight. Even though we all try to keep our diet balanced, stressful situations like this lockdown can shake up our routines, leaving us to crave junk food more than ever.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong to indulge in sweet treats or your favorite chips every now and then. But if you are looking for a little help to stay away from unhealthy foods that you think is causing you to gain weight, try out this simple trick demonstrated by new research.

The Study:

The researchers at the University of Minnesota sought to find out whether distanced self-talk would enhance goal pursuit to eat healthier using a new experimental design.

They asked 244 young adults, some of whom were making attempts to lose weight to choose between healthy and unhealthy foods that were presented on a computer screen. They also instructed a few participants to watch a two-minute video beforehand, which conveyed the benefits of healthy eating habits.

They asked the study participants to either speak in the first person- saying “what do I want?” or in third person addressing themselves by their own names- e.g. “Mary, what do you want?”.

The findings revealed the following:

• Individuals who spoke to themselves in the third person were more likely to choose a healthier food option compared to those who spoke in the first person to themselves while choosing between healthy and unhealthy foods.
• The likelihood of choosing healthier foods increased if the person had watched the video which advocated for the benefits of healthy eating prior to making food choices

“Findings indicated that dieters benefited the most from the combined use of distanced self-talk and a health prime. Non-dieters made healthier choices when using distanced self-talk regardless of whether they were primed with a health goal or not. These findings suggest that distanced self-talk may constitute a self-control strategy that encourages healthier eating and highlight the need for future research to examine its translational potential,” concluded the authors in their study published in Clinical Psychological Science.

Even though more studies are required to confirm the findings of the study, the authors stressed that performing this simple tactic is definitely worth trying and will definitely do no harm.