Everyone knows the benefits of proper nutrition, but how can you resist fragrant pastries or a mouth-watering burger from your local diner? We would be happy to follow a diet, but there is not enough willpower. Psychologist Sonya Lubomirsky has discovered a new way to improve eating habits: gratitude.
Many people from time to time make a promise to themselves to start eating right, but only a few keep it. In March 2019, the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology published the results of a study led by a team of scientists led by psychologist Sonja Lubomirski. Researchers have discovered a resource that helps you switch to a healthy diet and has nothing to do with diets. This resource is the emotion of gratitude.
To conduct the study, scientists attracted 1017 volunteers: students in grades 9 and 10 from four schools. All participants were divided into four groups. For a month, each group spent 5 minutes each week writing a letter on a specific topic. Topics were as follows:
- expressing gratitude to the person who helped to improve health;
- an expression of gratitude to the person who helped in their studies;
- expressing gratitude to a person who has done a good deed for you;
- making a to-do list for the week.
Thus, the three groups in the experiment worked on cultivating gratitude in different areas of life. The fourth group, whose members wrote about everyday activities, was the control group. In addition to writing letters, participants had to devote 30 minutes a week to improving the area of life they wrote about: health, learning, kindness, or self-organization.
At the end of the experimental month and three months after its completion, study participants completed questionnaires about their eating behavior. In particular, they noted how much fruit, vegetables, sweets and fast food they ate. At the end of each week of the experiment, participants also reported how they felt. They noted what positive or negative emotions they experienced at the moment and how strong they were.
Here’s what the results of the study showed. Participants who wrote thank you letters practiced healthier eating compared to those who simply wrote about daily activities. What’s more, their eating habits remained slightly better even three months after the end of the study. It is noteworthy that all three groups that wrote about gratitude in different areas of life achieved such results.
It turns out that gratitude helps to choose healthier food. Scientists believe that the mechanism works as follows: the practice of gratitude leads to a decrease in the frequency and intensity of negative emotions that people experience. This, in turn, leads to improved eating behavior. Many of us know for ourselves that such negative emotions as stress, boredom and sadness often push us to consume sweets or fast food.
Gratitude gives a powerful impetus not only to the mind, but also to the body.
Gratitude alone may not be able to drastically change your eating habits, but the cumulative effect will have a significant impact on your life in the long run. Developing a regular habit of practicing gratitude leads to small positive changes in eating behavior that accumulate over time and improve health for decades to come.
Gratitude gives a powerful impetus not only to the mind, but also to the body. It helps to strengthen the immune system, lower blood pressure, improve the quality of sleep — and this is not all the positive effects. We now know that gratitude also helps us eat better and healthier.
Much of the popular advice on healthy eating focuses on individual behavior: eat this, not that, do that, stay motivated. But sometimes you need to shift the focus from yourself to other people with the help of gratitude. This habit will be an effective addition to a healthy diet.
Source: greatergood.berkeley.edu