Brian Wansink is an eating behaviourist who is director of nutritional science at Cornell University. In a recent study he found that female secretaries ate 5.6 times more chocolates if they were placed on a nearby desk than if they has to physically stand up and walk a few metres to get to them.
An additional experiment interestingly revealed that office workers positioned near to glass dishes full of sweets ate 71 per cent more a day than those who sat near white opaque dishes filled with the same sweets.
Wansink reveals that when two women are brought together they tend to mimic each others eating habits and also reports that we eat 30 per cent more calories in company than we do alone.
So what drives the office feeders to fatten up others?
Susan Ringwood from eating disorder charity Beat has said the habit is likely to be caused by them having an unhealthy relationship with food themselves.
‘It is often assumed that people with eating disorders such as anorexia are not interested in food and don’t feel hungry. But, in fact, the opposite is true,’ Ringwood says.
If you find yourself constantly picking and nibbling on snacks and treats whilst in the office and are concerned your habit might be sliding out of control then a great option is that of hypnotherapy. Hypnotherapy has long since been used as a method of eliminating bad habits.
The therapy works through many techniques, one of which is retraining your unconscious mind to react to stimuli in a different way. For instance at the office when you are bored, a built in reaction may be to reach for this biscuit tin. A hypnotherapist could help to retrain the mind so next time boredom sets in you’ll be reaching for a glass of water.
If you would like more information on weight-loss hypnotherapy or any type of hypnotherapy more information can be found in the hypnotherapy areas section of this site. To contact a qualified professional you can use the search tool located on the homepage.
