This was told to a group of four year olds. They were left in a room for 45 minutes with 1 marshmallow and told that if they could resist the temptation by not eating it, they would receive a second marshmallow after the 50 minutes.
Most of the kids ate it as soon as the man left the room. Some licked it, some pressed it up against their eyes, some of the kids smelt it like it was the greatest smell in the world. The end result was that 2/3 ate it and 1/3 didn’t.
When they looked forward 15 years they found that the 1/3 that didn’t eat it where more successful in life (school, grades, work) than the 2/3’s that did eat it. Because the 1/3 of the group was willing to sacrifice immediate gratification in order to gain more in the end. I really like this but I thought it would apply much more accurately to our desire to eat as it relates to achieving a healthy and lean body.
When it comes to eating healthy I see 3 groups of people. One group of people just don’t care and will eat anything they want because the reward is not as important as the satisfaction of taste and their immediate desire to eat (like the kids that ate it as soon as the man left).
Another group will have a very hard time and will try really hard to convince themselves they should wait but can’t help themselves but cheat, they are the type that will end up eating a bowl of ice cream and Doritos at night because they were good during the day, and then tell me that they are following their diet (like the kids that licked it or ate the inside to make it look like they didn’t eat it).
Then there’s the last group. The serious group who we admire for having the self-discipline, except we sometimes call them boring to make us feel better. This is the group who will stick to it, the one’s that drink soda water at a party, that don’t even think of having desert, that carry around there food in a Tupperware.
So think of these kids next time you go to reach for some bad food and remember that the reward of stepping away and not eating the marshmallow will be well worth it in the end.