Dear Dad,
It’s the holiday season. Sweet treats are all around and festive feasts at every turn. There’s a long list of happy-hours, parties, and special events seeking your attendance. Enjoy and celebrate during this time of year but do not fall for the sunk food fallacy!
There’s a human tendency to stubbornly continue a treacherous path instead of cutting losses to start fresh. Psychologists call this phenomenon the sunk cost fallacy, a mindset that places disproportionate high value on time spent and resources used even when the forecasted result is bleak.
It’s this reason that people stay in jobs that they hate, finish movies that are terrible, or continue investing in a losing business proposition. The upfront investments of time or other resources warps their conceptions of what variables are truly important to make a wise decision. Unfortunately, people extend this failed logic to food choices, which I call the sunk food fallacy.
A common reason that people abandon healthy eating plans is due to moderate setbacks or lapses of discipline. We’ve all been there. The mindset trap of: I’ve already had one slice of greasy pizza so I might as well have two, or three, or four… I already ate like garbage today so why not an extra helping of dessert… well it’s the holidays so why not keep this going for a few days and I can’t waste time exercising… The problem compounds when your brain falls for this trap because it is instantly harder to return back to your previous healthy patterns. That’s why a broken healthy habit in December is likely to persist through the dark days of winter. The snow melts and you find yourself further behind than when you started.
Consider these three points to help avoid the sunk food fallacy when eating this Holiday season:
Past costs (foods eaten) are irrelevant: The type or amount of food eaten previously should have no bearing on the next food decision that you make. Previous meals are sunk costs that cannot be recovered or changed.
Focus on a healthy future: when deciding what and when to eat consider the potential benefits of the current options not your past investments (food decisions)
Resist Emotional Influence: it’s natural to feel a sense of regret after making poor eating decisions but don’t let that lead to irrational decisions during your next meal.
We live in a culture that tends to celebrate with food. It’s not all bad. Enjoy the sweet tastes, good company, and reasons to celebrate this season, but don’t use it as an excuse to sink into a food coma of no return. Treat yourself responsibly!
Tis the season, it’s the best time of the year.
With Love,
JSR
