The “Eating Experience” can vary from spending several hours at a fine restaurant, enjoying every course while having great conversation with your dinner partners to wolfing down a sandwich quickly due to lack of time to engage in a full meal.
Many people, especially those that work full time and have children of custodial ages, attempt to “multitask”, i.e. doing several things at the same time in order to fulfill all of the obligations/requirements of their days.
I will refer to the term “Distracted Eating” as a situation when a person is concentrating on something other than the meal/snack they are consuming. Here are some examples:
- Eating lunch (or dinner) at the work desk, focusing on the work tasks being completed
- Snacking on foods at night while watching a show or movie on your favorite streaming service or cable channel
- Eating food while you are attending a live sports event
- Snacking on popcorn at a movie theater when engrossed in the riveting events of the flick
- Eating/snacking when you are on the smart phone or computer checking out your social media feeds
During “distracted eating”, by focusing on the other activity, there is very little-no focus on the eating activity. This may very well result in poor portion control if a derailing food/snack is being consumed. A classic example of this will be that large bucket of popcorn that is bought prior to watching the movie. Once the film begins, being engrossed in the movie will result in the repetitive hand-to-mouth eating of the popcorn that results in finishing that huge pocket of popcorn by the end of the movie. And for those people that get enticed by the “deal” of getting a free refill of the popcorn if the large bucket is purchased, often the original bucket is consumed while the trailers are being shown and then a refill is obtained (and consumed) during the movie.
Are you subject to distracted eating? If so, take the steps needed to rid yourself of this behavior. Obligate yourself to NOT eat/snack while engaged in other activities. By doing so, your weight control journey will become more effective.
Speaking of movies, I recently saw a Michelle Williams/Seth Rogan movie called “Take This Waltz” which I thought was very interesting an certainly not a “Frat boy” type flick Rogan is known for. The movie contained a catchy old song “Video Killed The Radio Star” by the Buggles. Remember this one?
