Episodic future thinking reduces eating in a food court

Think fast: rapid assessment of the effects of episodic future thinking on delay discounting in overweight/obese participants

“…Although estimates of time required for task completion could not be obtained in the present study due to constraints of the software platform (Qualtrics), prior data indicate that this task can be completed rapidly (25 s; Koffarnus & Bickel 2014), making it uniquely well suited to examine delay discounting non-intrusively and iteratively in the natural environment. The ability to measure real-time, EFT-dependent changes in delay discounting in the real world may enhance our understanding of mechanisms underlying this intervention’s effects on dietary and weight control (Sze et al 2015; O’Neill et al 2016) and other maladaptive behaviors such as alcohol use (Snider et al 2016) or cigarette smoking (Stein et al 2016). …”

“…To generate episodic events, participants used a self-guided generation task (Sze et al in press) similar to staff-guided tasks used in previous studies (Daniel et al 2013; O’Neill et al 2016; Stein et al 2016; Snider et al 2016). EFT participants generated personalized future events that they were looking forward to and could vividly imagine.…”

“…Adapting these methods for use in natural settings has shown that EFT holds promise as a targeted weight loss treatment. For example, EFT has been used outside the laboratory to effectively reduce energy intake when administered both acutely (O’Neill et al 2016) and as part of a web-based treatment to aid in dietary and weight control (Sze et al 2015). Indeed, such covariance between EFT, delay discounting, and eating behavior further supports an etiological role of delay discounting in obesity.…”

“…Use of EFT interventions in natural treatment settings (Sze et al 2015; O’Neill et al 2016) could benefit from ecological momentary assessment of delay discounting, allowing real-time assessment of EFT-dependent changes in discounting and how these changes covary with dietary intake and other treatment-related behavior (e.g., adherence to exercise regimens). Moreover, discounting in the natural environment could be examined in the absence of EFT to identify fluctuating environmental conditions or times of day (e.g., stress, meal times) that individual participants would most benefit from enhanced self-control.…”

Episodic future thinking: mechanisms and functions

“…However, when people simulate consuming the larger reward, they become more patient and shift to favoring this more farsighted choice (68–70). Such effects have been extended to the domain of eating behavior, where engaging in episodic future thinking reduces calorie intake in both female undergraduates (71) and in overweight or obese women (72–73), thus biasing dietary decisions away from immediate food rewards and toward fulfilling longer-term health goals related to weight loss (72). Analogous effects have been observed on consumption of hypothetical alcoholic drinks in individuals with alcohol dependency problems (74) and on cigarette consumption in smokers (75).…”