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Earlier this year, I learned about the “sunk cost fallacy”, a behavioral finance term that describes our tendency to throw good money after bad. When a person makes a decision about money, she generally looks at the entire history of the decision instead of focusing on the present. For example, she might continue to repair a toilet because she’s already spent so much trying to get it to work, whereas the best course of action might be to buy a new one.
The classic example of the sunk cost fallacy comes from poker. In poker, you bet on your hand as it exists at the moment (and its potential for the future). If you’re playing Texas Hold’em, for example, and have a pair of jacks on the deal, you might bet them strong in order to scare off other players. But if the flop reveals three hearts, and the turn yields another one, it’s best to get out of the game. But many people will stay in because they’re “pot committed” — they figure they’ve already risked so much to be in the game that it can’t hurt to bet a little more. This is dumb. It’s the sunk cost fallacy in action.
How does this relate to food?
Many people are taught from a young age that they must clean their plates. “Think of all the starving babies in Africa,” our parents told us, and then they forced us to sit at the table until we’d finished our dinners. One way the sunk cost fallacy manifests itself in dieting is the irrational compulsion to finish everything on your plate.
This way of thinking rears its head in other ways, too. What if you’re at a nice restaurant enjoying a meal that you can’t take home? If you’re like me, you feel compelled to eat every bite. I’ve paid for the food, and by God I’m going to eat it!
Or what about when you make a mistake? In the move that prompted this post, I just had a Snickers bar. About midway through I realized that:
- I wasn’t hungry.
- I wasn’t enjoying the candy.
A logical person would stop eating the Snickers bar. Being an emotional eater, I kept munching. “I’ve paid for it already,” I thought. “And besides, there are just a couple bites left.”
Dumb.
One key to eating sensibly is to listen to your body. When you’re full, stop eating, regardless of how much you like the dish or how much you’ve paid for it. It’s fine to take pleasure from eating, but don’t eat more than your body needs or wants.
Mac
13 responses so far ↓
1 Lauren Muney // Dec 13, 2007 at 11:09 am
That’s mindfulness… First is training yourself to discover what you are doing, then to discover what you are THINKING when you are doing it.
Then is the part where you just decide what is most value-ful about that activity… we all can ‘justify’ (or rationalize, as you did with the Snickers bar) our actions - but what creates the best results is when you do the actions which create the most BENEFIT for you - and create the most long-last VALUE.
To beat a dead horse (as you know, JD, I can do that so very well, poor horse), here’s an example: a spouse who cheats on his/her partner because that partner ‘doesn’t understand him’, ‘he/she is not so attractive anymore’, ‘I’m bored in my marriage’, ‘I’m away from home so much’, ‘humans aren’t built to be monogamous’, or whatever rationalization sounds good at the time - instead of actually DOING SOMETHING about the home relationship.
There’s nothing wrong with a (one) Snickers bar. But there will be about 20-60 pounds wrong when they add up, due to creative rationalizations. Mindfulness helps you notice what’s happening to help reduce those rationalizations - and hopefully the pounds [weight] as well.
2 Dave // Dec 13, 2007 at 11:21 am
J.D., I’ll do you one better — stop eating *before* you’re full. It takes about 20 minutes to feel full from a meal. So just eat correct portion sizes, then give yourself some *time* to feel satiated. You know how you always talk about the cardinal rule of personal finance is to SPEND LESS THAN YOU EARN. Well, the weight-loss world has an elite cardinal rule of its own, which is WEIGHT LOSS IS A RESULT OF TAKING IN FEWER CALORIES. Exercising will speed the process by “getting rid” of even more calories in your system. So if you’re going to continue to eat shitty foods, at least eat *small* amounts of shitty foods. Of course, your anecdote about the Snickers bar has already told me that you don’t have a food problem. I now understand that food is only the *symptom* of another problem you have, just as debt is not the real problem for people but merely the symptom of the problem, the real problem being overspending and undersaving. Okay, so what is J.D. Roth’s real problem? I think you just have a real impulse-control problem that I suspect affects your life in many, many other ways besides overeating. I would say your overeating is just one of many symptoms of an overall problem w/ compulsive behavior, of feeling besieged by urges of all stripes. What this means is that if you want to change your eating habits, you will first have to address your overall impulse-control problem. In other words, you’re gonna have to hack at the “roots” of your problem, not the “fruits” of your problem. You need a complete inner-world makeover. The best tool to use for this makeover is a book called Brain Lock by Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz. Begin it tonight, then read it again and again until you are free.
3 JenH // Dec 13, 2007 at 12:16 pm
Very timely, as I just did that exact same thing with the exact same kind of candy bar this weekend. Sigh. Problem is, I did enjoy it
However, I knew that I was eating it because I had gone too long without eating, got too hungry, and was at the point that I would eat anything you put in front of me. I agree with the baove poster who mentioned mindfulness - I like to think that in identifying what I did to lead me to that candy bar, I practiced some mindfulness after the fact. Which would have been better before the fact, but I guess some mindfulness is better than none at all.
4 FinanceAndFat // Dec 13, 2007 at 12:25 pm
That’s so true and it’s something I do all of the time. Right now I have junk food at home that I still eat because I paid for it and I shouldn’t waste it- dumb! I know better. I’m going home and trashing the junk food tonight.
5 Melissa // Dec 13, 2007 at 1:43 pm
You know, that snickers bar isn’t going to go bad if you wrap it back up and just eat it later.
I’m at the point where I stop eating when I’m satiated. But I have yet to find that magical 80% full that is supposed to be the point at which we stop eating. I suppose it’s just a matter of balance and understanding your body - an area where I’m certain we all could use a little improvement.
@FinanceAndFat: don’t trash it! Take it in to your work. I’m sure someone there will appreciate it.
6 Rachel // Dec 13, 2007 at 2:43 pm
It took me a long time to figure out this one - and even your mentality here didn’t work for me.
As weird as it is, with things that I couldn’t or didn’t want to store as leftovers - it took me thinking that I can either a) throw this in the garbage and it’s no longer good or b) continue to eat it and it will end up, not in the garbage but…uh…well you know… and it’s still no longer good.
You basically bought the thing expecting to eat it all - so why does it matter if it ends up in the garbage can or your gut? Either way the outcome is what you were expecting to happen to it.
7 Brooke // Dec 13, 2007 at 2:51 pm
What helps for me is to look at the calories I am eating in the same way as I view money I spend.
There are websites where you can enter your height, weight, and the goal weight you want to be to calculate the maximum calories you need to eat in order to lose weight to meet your goal. For me, it’s about 180o per day (if I want to maintain my current weight).
When you calculate that Snickers bar is probably about 300 of your daily allowed calories, you will think twice about “spending” your calories on it.
The trick, of course, is to make sure you are spending your allotted calories on healthy foods so you get the nutrition you need.
A lot of people don’t like to keep track of calories, but I find it very very helpful to write everything down that I am putting in my mouth. It makes me much more aware of the choices I make and how they affect my weight.
8 plonkee // Dec 13, 2007 at 3:35 pm
To get around this, a friend of mine describes purchases as paying for an option.
Like if I go to a restaurant, I’m paying for the option to eat the food on the plate - I can choose to eat or not as I please.
It does help me avoid the whole, I’ve paid for it, I’ll eat it thing. It can be more like, I’ve paid for it so I don’t have to eat it at all.
9 TosaJen // Dec 13, 2007 at 3:40 pm
On the other hand, if you invest in some yummy, beautiful, organic produce, the sunk cost analysis will work in your favor. You have to eat it before it goes bad, because you paid so much for it!
10 seawallrunner // Dec 13, 2007 at 7:44 pm
> It’s fine to take pleasure from eating
but it’s utterly delicious to stop eating, then weigh yourself later that week and enjoy the pounds lost.
I find that I succeed more (better) when I think of positives rather than negatives. I focus on the pleasure, later, of attaining my goals - rather than on the pleasure - if you call it that - of finishing a candy bar that is no longer tasty after the fifth bite.
Sure it hurts to throw out a dollar’s worth of a $2 candy bar.
But when I think how much it will ‘cost’ in frustration, disappointment and pain from weighing myself and seeing scant weight loss, I throw the bar away and rejoice in the fact that I tasted chocolate but did not have to eat The Whole Thing.
11 [Link] The Sunk Cost Fallacy » Geek Fitness // Dec 14, 2007 at 6:08 am
[…] from the excellent fitness blog Get Fit Slowly, has posted a few interesting thoughts about The Sunk Cost Fallacy (also known as the Concorde Fallacy) and how it relates to healthy eating. The basic premise is […]
12 Dave Child // Dec 14, 2007 at 6:16 am
Great post, J.D. - interesting stuff. I think the same theory applies to most people quitting smoking as well. Most smokers will always put it off until they finish their last pack, even though they want to stop smoking, just because they’ve paid for it already.
This appears to be true for the ones who actually do want to quit, not just the ones who are procrastinating.
13 Lazy Man and Health // Dec 28, 2007 at 1:57 pm
At least the Snickers bar has a bit of protein in it. I’ve always thought that if you wait until “you are hungry” you’ve waited too long.
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