‘Postponing a snack could help resist your temptation’

“It really keeps the temptation at arm’s length,” study researcher Nicole Mead was quoted as saying by LiveScience.

In their research,presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in San Diego,Mead and her colleagues found that this postponement strategy neither encourages guilt-ridden indulgence in an unhealthy treat nor does it encourage painful abstinence (which all too often leads to later bingeing).

In one experiment,the researchers provided volunteers,who were completing various tasks in the lab,with bowls of M&M candies. While some students were told to eat them if they wanted,some were told to avoid eating them,and a third group was told that they could eat the sweets later,if they felt like it.

At the end of the experiment,after the students could assume the researchers were no longer interested in them,the psychologists brought back the bowls.

The students who had already snacked on the treats to their satisfaction ate 5.19 grams of the candies,while those who were deprived of them earlier went wild,eating 9.81 grams. In comparison,the postponement group ate 5.08 grams,the least of all three groups.

“Participants in the ‘don’t eat’ condition ate practically double the amount of M&Ms” as those in the “wait until later” condition,Mead said.