(The author, not taking his own advice.Rafi Letzter)
It's 2 p.m. and your stomach is grumbling something fierce.
That healthy lunch you packed the night before is still sitting on your kitchen counter at home. Your work is piled high and you need a break, but you don't have time to actually sit and enjoy a meal.
You're going to have to eat this one on the go. Take a pizza stroll — grab a slice and eat your lunch on the way back to work. Though it's certainly emotionally unfulfilling, and dangerous if you prefer to keep your eyes on your vittles over the street, what effect does it have on your body?
Research suggests it's not only sad, but also less physically satisfying, and could even lead to eating more at a later time.
A study from the University of Surrey looked at a group women who were made up of dieters and non-dieters. They were told they were participating in a study of how distraction affects the taste of foods and were asked not to eat anything three hours prior to arriving.
The study divided them into three groups. One watched a five minute segment of "Friends" while eating a cereal bar. Another was asked to walk around a corridor while eating. A third just sat and conversed with a friend while eating.
After the snack, participants were given a questionnaire, and took part in a taste test of four bowls of other snacks, containing carrot sticks, grapes, chips, and chocolate. The researchers took note of how much food was eaten after the participants left the room.
The dieters ate more after walking with their snack than those dieters that had watched TV or talked. They also ate five times more chocolate.
"Eating on the go may make dieters overeat later on in the day," said lead author Jane Ogden, a behavioral psychologist at Surrey, in a press release. (The same results were not found in non-dieters in this small study, but stay tuned.)
What might be causing this? It turns out that our feelings of satiation are mental as well as physical. Your mind tells you you're full just like your stomach.
(Don't eat and work. Eat, then work.Sarah Marriage)
"Walking is a powerful form of distraction which disrupts our ability to process the impact eating has on our hunger," said Ogden, in the release.
Walking may also cause us to subconsciously treat ourselves later. "Walking, even just around a corridor, can be regarded as a form of exercise which justifies overeating later on as a form of reward," Ogden added.
But it really comes down to distraction.
"Even though walking had the most impact, any form of distraction, including eating at our desks can lead to weight gain," explained Ogden in the release. "When we don't fully concentrate on our meals and the process of taking in food, we fall into a trap of mindless eating where we don't track or recognize the food that has just been consumed."