Situational Effects on Meal Intake

You may have noticed that as you experience different situations in life, your diet is often affected. These situations can be day by day. For example, you may have just eaten dinner when your friends call and ask you to go out to a restaurant with them. They can also be repetitive situations which can lead to health problems.

Depression, Anxiety, Stress and Undereating

• Situations in life such as death of a loved one or the end of a relationship or friendship can cause depression which ultimately affects your meal intake. When a person feel depressed or anxious, eating may be the last thing he wants to do because of nausea or a empty feeling in the pit of his stomach. Stressful situations can also cause undereating for the same reasons. Sometimes a stressed out person may be so involved in her situation that she completely forgets to eat. This commonly happens to college students during final exams.

Eating Alone Versus Eating With Others

• If you are like most people, you eat more when you are with your friends. Often this happens because you are in a good mood and you are absorbed in conversation and not paying attention to the bodily signs of feeling full. Family and friends may order more food at a restaurant or make more food at home due to a celebration. Another situation that affects meal intake is friends' competitive eating. This happens mostly among young males.

Restaurants and Situational Eating

• Going to a restaurant is another situation that affects meal intake in several ways, such as in what you order. You may be going on a diet or trying to eat healthy and try to order a more healthy item off the menu such as a salad. However, the salad may have more calories than entrees such as burgers. Next, the restaurant may give you a large portion, causing you to overeat. That is, you may eat the whole meal, even though the portion size might be double what you would normally consume. If you are with friends, they may convince you to split dessert with them, meaning you eat more than you've planned.

Opportunity to Eat and Overeating

• Certain people are eating opportunists and may have a compulsive eating disorder. If you are an eating opportunist and you are in a situation where abundant food is available, you may eat a meal even if you aren't hungry. An example of an eating opportunist would be someone who has just eaten lunch when an employee brings free lunch for everyone in the office. Because the food is free, she may eat an extra meal even though she does not need to. Long-term overeating can cause health problems such as diabetes or high cholesterol.

Exercise and Change in Diet

• If you've begun a new exercise routine, you may notice an increase in daily hunger because you are burning more calories than your body is used to. Starting a new exercise routine may be a situation that causes you to eat more. Staying hydrated while you exercise can decrease how hungry you feel. If you stop exercising, you may notice a decline in hunger because your body is not using as much energy. An end to an exercise routine may be a situation that causes you to eat less.

Money and Diet

• If you find yourself in a financially unstable situation, it may become difficult for you to eat. How you act on this situation will affect your eating habits and diet. You could choose to cut back on the amount you eat but retain the quality of food. This could fall into the category of undereating. You could also eat substitute cheaper, higher-calorie foods, which could lead you to gain weight. Another option would be to give up eating out and home cook all of your food, which may be healthier, depending on what you cook.