"Stopping feels like losing something"

This chapter is about the pang. You've had enough, there's good food in front of you, and you think about putting your fork down. Something in you objects. The objection isn't hunger. It feels more like loss, as if you were being asked to hand back something that was yours. I think this small feeling keeps the fork moving more than hunger does, or even taste.

It helps to ask where the feeling comes from, because it isn't silly. I can think of three sources, and the evidence is good for only one of them.

The first is the way people weigh losses. Giving up something you already have stings more than failing to gain the same thing. Food on your plate is yours in a way that food in the shop isn't. Leaving it is felt as a loss, even if you didn't want it.

The second is old scarcity. If you grew up in a big family where the slow eater got less, or in a house where money was tight, you learned that food in front of you should be eaten now, because it might not be there later. That lesson was correct when you learned it. It can run on for decades after it stopped being true.

The third is dieting, and here there's research. If you've spent years on and off diets, you've taught yourself that good food is always about to be taken away. There's always a Monday coming when the lasagne will be forbidden. That belief makes scarcity real again, because it's you who's about to create it.

Two researchers, Janet Polivy and Peter Herman, spent decades studying this. In one experiment from their group, people were randomly told either that they'd be starting a week-long diet after the session, or nothing of the kind. Then they did a supposed taste test, in which the amount they ate was secretly measured. Among people who were habitual dieters, those expecting the diet ate a good deal more than those who weren't. People who didn't habitually diet ate the same either way. The authors called it eating, drinking and being merry, for tomorrow we diet. Just planning to restrict was enough to set off overeating in the very people who restrict.

An earlier experiment from the same group found a related pattern. People were given a snack beforehand, small or large, and then offered food. Non-dieters who'd had the larger snack ate less afterwards, as you'd expect. Dieters who'd had the larger snack ate more. The usual explanation is that once dieters felt they'd broken their rules for the day, there seemed no point in holding back. It's the thought you may know as "I've blown it now, so I might as well carry on".

Put those together and the pang makes sense. If some part of you believes this food is about to become scarce, because the diet starts tomorrow or because today was already ruined, then each good meal is a last chance. Nobody leaves food on the plate at a last chance.

So the answer to the pang is the opposite of more restraint, and the word for it is permission. The lasagne isn't going anywhere. You can have it tomorrow, because it's in a box in the fridge. You can make it again next week. No Monday is coming on which it'll be banned, because this book bans nothing and I'd suggest you don't either. The food you like is a permanent part of your life, and you'll go on having it.

Once that's true, and once you believe it, stopping at enough is a different act. At a last chance, stopping is a loss. When there's another meal tomorrow, stopping means you've finished for now. You aren't giving up the lasagne. What you give up is the part of it you wouldn't have enjoyed, and you keep a better part for tomorrow.

You might say, "I'll still feel the pang." You will, for a while. It's a habit of feeling, and those fade slowly. But a pang is a sensation. It's brief, and it passes within a minute or two of the plate leaving your sight. It's far smaller than the discomfort it's been saving you from. Next time it comes, try saying, in your head, "there'll be more tomorrow". Then make sure it's true.