Not all of us have the luxury of ordering lunch every day, but this tip from The Science of Us is a good one: Use delivery services’ “order ahead” feature to have something delicious and healthy delivered for lunch, and save future, hungry you from having to choose between a salad and a burger.
Photo by Intangible Arts.
They explain:
It’s amazing how much things can change in the span of just a few hours: You wake up resolving that today will be the day I get a salad, no really, I mean it this time. And then come lunchtime you already want to go home and crawl into bed, and the day’s not even half over yet, and somehow the thought of relying on lettuce to carry you through makes time stretch infinitely longer in front of you. Your morning self, you now realise, was a fool, one whose naïveté is no match for the siren call of a burrito.
Or maybe you should put your morning self in charge. In a new study in the Journal of Marketing Research, researchers outlined a simple tactic for eating healthier during the workday: If you’re buying lunch, just order it several hours before you plan to actually eat it.
This concept of putting “past you” in charge of “future you” with the understanding that you’re of sound mind right now and capable of making good decisions that you may not be in the mental place to make later on is nothing new. In fact, we mentioned it when we talked about the benefits of meal planning, something echoed in a 2010 paper published in Marketing Letters.
Bottom line, we’re all busy and we’re all faced with hundreds of decisions every single day. If you’re in a good headspace to plan ahead and remove the frustration of choosing a healthy meal option and that future decision from future you’s plate, it’s a good idea.
If you’re unable to order lunch in advance for whatever reason, you can still pack a good, healthy lunch for yourself the night before (do it straight after dinner so you’re thinking with your head instead of your stomach.) Now the only extra step to eating it is the walk to the office fridge.
Use Seamless to Trick Yourself Into Healthier Lunches [The Science of Us]
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