Christmas is coming
Depending on your personality and your relationship with food, Christmas eating will be a source of joy or dread. It’s not just Dinner itself on the Big Day – it’s the annual flurry of pre-Christmas get-togethers with work colleagues or groups of friends.
What probably happens more than at other times of year, is that you’re eating with people you don’t often share meals with. This means all sorts of subconscious influences on what you order and how much you consume.
Research shows that we aren’t fully aware of these social influences at the time they are happening. Becoming aware and getting a handle on these influences can help navigate the festive season, so that you can enjoy social eating occasions without overeating.
We’re not talking here about overt pressure from other people to get us to eat more – the social influences I’m talking about in this blog are the ones that fly under the radar of our conscious awareness.
Do you tend to gain weight at Christmas?
Research shows that on average adults gain weight annually, and the increase isn’t steady across the year. In countries that observe it, Christmas weight gain is responsible for much of this.
A recent European study* of 1,000 people engaged in a weight loss intervention found a pattern of weight gain of 1.3% beginning in early December and continuing until the first few days of January then levelling off, suggesting that weight gained at Christmas is not fully compensated for in the months that follow.
This may not sound much, but if you now weigh 10 stones (63kg) and you gain 2lbs (1kg) each Christmas, that’s an additional stone every 7 years. If you’re 15 stones (95kg) now, 1.3% is about 3lbs (1.4kg) a year which means gaining a stone every 5 years, just from the extra eating during the festive system.
The amount we eat is powerfully influenced by who we’re eating with
When eating with strangers, people tend to eat less than they would when eating alone.
Whereas you tend to eat more in the company of family and friends.
Social influences are extremely powerful and often override other influences on eating, such as your prior intentions or goals. Without realising it, you subconsciously use the intake of your eating companions as a regulatory guide.
And the amounts aren’t trivial – people may eat in the region of 30% more** when other people are present compared with eating alone.
What is happening here?
- When it’s just two of you
One of the most powerful influences on food intake is modelling – people adjust their food intake to that of their eating companion, eating a little when their companion only eats a small portion, and eating more when their companion eats more.
It’s thought that this happens partly because an ‘acceptable’ amount of food is uncertain – what is normal in one family is different from that in another. So when you’re eating with someone outside your family, you have to come up with some means of gauging how much you ‘should’ be eating. By ‘should’ I mean, what you feel OK eating in this particular social situation, with this particular person.
When your companion eats very little, this sets a relatively low ceiling for acceptable food intake. But if you’re sharing a meal with someone who loves larger portions, your subconscious mind will push you to eat more.
- When it’s a group, which includes people you don’t know well
When eating with strangers, people tend to eat less than if they were eating alone. This is called the Social Inhibition of eating. It’s thought to be to do with Impression Management – where you don’t know your fellow diners well, you’re likely to want to make a good impression.
In a society which values thinness, one way a positive image can be conveyed is via the amounts of food consumed. You are perceived as more attractive, likeable and moral when you consume smaller portions***!!
So at the office Christmas do, you’re managing the impression you’re making on your fellow diners by downsizing how much you eat.
- When it’s a group of people you know well
When you’re with people you know well – family and friends – it’s a totally different story.
Your intake goes up compared to when you are eating alone. This is called the Social Facilitation of eating.
The larger the group, the more we eat. This is thought to be related to the fact that larger group meals tend to last longer, and the amount of food available per person tends to be higher.
There’s a theory that Social Facilitation of eating evolved as a strategy to maximise personal food intake in the context of sharing limited food resources with members of a close social group.
What you can do to reduce the impact of your eating companions on how much you eat
- First, be aware that this stuff happens at a level below conscious awareness. Prepare yourself to address this – make a plan for how you’ll keep track of the amount you want to enjoy.
- Address the bottom-line decision: is it more important overall to fit in on this occasion or is it more important to me to stick to your eating goals? If it would create too much flak or pressure, then maybe decide to eat in line with the group
- Before you leave home to go out to eat, plan how you’ll most enjoy the meal. If you know where you’re going and they have the menu online, have a look and decide what to order.
- One way to help you stick to your goals is to mentally rehearse how you want to act through the course of the meal. Run through it like a movie in your mind before you go, once or twice. In this movie, you manage to keep to all your eating intentions. This type of ‘mastery imagery’ is effective in helping you to do what you intend.
- During the meal itself, focus on enjoying the chat or the banter most of all, so that you’re getting pleasure from social interaction, not just from food.
- Take it one meal at a time, and see what works for you and what doesn’t. As with everything to do with eating and appetite, there’s no one right way to do things.
If you’ve struggled with disordered eating
If you have experienced an eating disorder in the past, you may already have a heightened awareness of the relative amounts you eat compared with others. In which case, this blog might not be so relevant to you.
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References
* Turicchi, J et al (2020) Weekly, seasonal and holiday body weight fluctuation patterns among individuals engaged in a European multi-centre behavioural weight loss maintenance intervention. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0232152
**John M de Castro (2000) Eating behavior: lessons from the real world of humans,
Nutrition, Volume 16: 800-813, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0899-9007(00)00414-7.
*** Steim, R. I., and Nemeroff, C. J. (1995). Moral overtones of food: Judgments
of others based on what they eat. Personal. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 21, 480–490.
doi: 10.1177/0146167295215006