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Share by Karthik: An article about escaping our comfort zone to keep growing -

https://positivepsychology.com/comfort-zone/

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Abstract

Research suggests that "healthy" food choices such as eating fruits and vegetables have not only physical but also mental health benefits and might be a long-term investment in future well-being. This view contrasts with the belief that high-caloric foods taste better, make us happy, and alleviate a negative mood. To provide a more comprehensive assessment of food choice and well-being, we investigated in-the-moment eating happiness by assessing complete, real life dietary behaviour across eight days using smartphone-based ecological momentary assessment. Three main findings emerged: First, of 14 different main food categories, vegetables consumption contributed the largest share to eating happiness measured across eight days. Second, sweets on average provided comparable induced eating happiness to "healthy" food choices such as fruits or vegetables. Third, dinner elicited comparable eating happiness to snacking. These findings are discussed within the "food as health" and "food as well-being" perspectives on eating behaviour.

Introduction

When it comes to eating, researchers, the media, and policy makers mainly focus on negative aspects of eating behaviour, like restricting certain foods, counting calories, and dieting. Likewise, health intervention efforts, including primary prevention campaigns, typically encourage consumers to trade off the expected enjoyment of hedonic and comfort foods against health benefits. However, research has shown that diets and restrained eating are often counterproductive and may even enhance the risk of long-term weight gain and eating disorders. A promising new perspective entails a shift from food as pure nourishment towards a more positive and well-being centred perspective of human eating behaviour. In this context, Block et al. have advocated a paradigm shift from "food as health" to "food as well-being" (p. 848).

Supporting this perspective of "food as well-being", recent research suggests that "healthy" food choices, such as eating more fruits and vegetables, have not only physical but also mental health benefits and might be a long-term investment in future well-being. For example, in a nationally representative panel survey of over 12,000 adults from Australia, Mujcic and Oswald showed that fruit and vegetable consumption predicted increases in happiness, life satisfaction, and well-being over two years. Similarly, using lagged analyses, White and colleagues showed that fruit and vegetable consumption predicted improvements in positive affect on the subsequent day but not vice versa. Also, cross-sectional evidence reported by Blanchflower et al. shows that eating fruits and vegetables is positively associated with well-being after adjusting for demographic variables including age, sex, or race. Of note, previous research includes a wide range of time lags between actual eating occasion and well-being assessment, ranging from 24 hours to 14 days, to 24 months. Thus, the findings support the notion that fruit and vegetable consumption has beneficial effects on different indicators of well-being, such as happiness or general life satisfaction, across a broad range of time spans.

The contention that healthy food choices such as a higher fruit and vegetable consumption is associated with greater happiness and well-being clearly contrasts with the common belief that in particular high-fat, high-sugar, or high-caloric foods taste better and make us happy while we are eating them. When it comes to eating, people usually have a spontaneous "unhealthy = tasty" association and assume that chocolate is a better mood booster than an apple. According to this in-the-moment well-being perspective, consumers have to trade off the expected enjoyment of eating against the health costs of eating unhealthy foods.

A wealth of research shows that the experience of negative emotions and stress leads to increased consumption in a substantial number of individuals ("emotional eating") of unhealthy food ("comfort food"). However, this research stream focuses on emotional eating to "smooth" unpleasant experiences in response to stress or negative mood states, and the mood-boosting effect of eating is typically not assessed. One of the few studies testing the effectiveness of comfort food in improving mood showed that the consumption of "unhealthy" comfort food had a mood boosting effect after a negative mood induction but not to a greater extent than non-comfort or neutral food. Hence, even though people may believe that snacking on "unhealthy" foods like ice cream or chocolate provides greater pleasure and psychological benefits, the consumption of "unhealthy" foods might not actually be more psychologically beneficial than other foods.

However, both streams of research have either focused on a single food category (fruit and vegetable consumption), a single type of meal (snacking), or a single eating occasion (after negative/neutral mood induction). Accordingly, it is unknown whether the boosting effect of eating is specific to certain types of food choices and categories or whether eating has a more general boosting effect that is observable after the consumption of both "healthy" and "unhealthy" foods and across eating occasions. Accordingly, in the present study, we investigated the psychological benefits of eating that varied by food categories and meal types by assessing complete dietary behaviour across eight days in real life.

Furthermore, previous research on the impact of eating on well-being tended to rely on retrospective assessments such as food frequency questionnaires and written food diaries. Such retrospective self-report methods rely on the challenging task of accurately estimating average intake or remembering individual eating episodes and may lead to under-reporting food intake, particularly unhealthy food choices such as snacks. To avoid memory and bias problems in the present study we used ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to obtain ecologically valid and comprehensive real life data on eating behaviour and happiness as experienced in-the-moment.

In the present study, we examined the eating happiness and satisfaction experienced in-the-moment, in real time and in real life, using a smartphone based EMA approach. Specifically, healthy participants were asked to record each eating occasion, including main meals and snacks, for eight consecutive days and rate how tasty their meal/snack was, how much they enjoyed it, and how pleased they were with their meal/snack immediately after each eating episode. This intense recording of every eating episode allows assessing eating behaviour on the level of different meal types and food categories to compare experienced eating happiness across meals and categories. Following the two different research streams, we expected on a food category level that not only "unhealthy" foods like sweets would be associated with high experienced eating happiness but also "healthy" food choices such as fruits and vegetables. On a meal type level, we hypothesised that the happiness of meals differs as a function of meal type. According to previous contention, snacking in particular should be accompanied by greater happiness.

Results

Eating episodes

Overall, during the study period, a total of 1,044 completed eating episodes were reported (see also Table ). On average, participants rated their eating happiness with M = 77.59 which suggests that overall eating occasions were generally positive. However, experienced eating happiness also varied considerably between eating occasions as indicated by a range from 7.00 to 100.00 and a standard deviation of SD  = 16.41.

Food categories and experienced eating happiness

All eating episodes were categorised according to their food category based on the German Nutrient Database (German: Bundeslebensmittelschlüssel), which covers the average nutritional values of approximately 10,000 foods available on the German market and is a validated standard instrument for the assessment of nutritional surveys in Germany. As shown in Table , eating happiness differed significantly across all 14 food categories, F(13, 2131) = 1.78, p = 0.04. On average, experienced eating happiness varied from 71.82 ( SD = 18.65) for fish to 83.62 ( SD = 11.61) for meat substitutes. Post hoc analysis, however, did not yield significant differences in experienced eating happiness between food categories, p ≥ 0.22. Hence, on average, "unhealthy" food choices such as sweets ( M = 78.93, SD = 15.27) did not differ in experienced happiness from "healthy" food choices such as fruits ( M = 78.29, SD = 16.13) or vegetables ( M = 77.57, SD  = 17.17). In addition, an intraclass correlation (ICC) of ρ = 0.22 for happiness indicated that less than a quarter of the observed variation in experienced eating happiness was due to differences between food categories, while 78% of the variation was due to differences within food categories.

However, as Figure (left side) depicts, consumption frequency differed greatly across food categories. Frequently consumed food categories encompassed vegetables which were consumed at 38% of all eating occasions ( n = 400), followed by dairy products with 35% ( n = 366), and sweets with 34% ( n = 356). Conversely, rarely consumed food categories included meat substitutes, which were consumed in 2.2% of all eating occasions ( n = 23), salty extras (1.5%, n = 16), and pastries (1.3%, n  = 14).

Amount of experienced eating happiness by food category

To account for the frequency of consumption, we calculated and scaled the absolute experienced eating happiness according to the total sum score. As shown in Figure (right side), vegetables contributed the biggest share to the total happiness followed by sweets, dairy products, and bread. Clustering food categories shows that fruits and vegetables accounted for nearly one quarter of total eating happiness score and thus, contributed to a large part of eating related happiness. Grain products such as bread, pasta, and cereals, which are main sources of carbohydrates including starch and fibre, were the second main source for eating happiness. However, "unhealthy" snacks including sweets, salty extras, and pastries represented the third biggest source of eating related happiness.

Experienced eating happiness by meal type

To further elucidate the contribution of snacks to eating happiness, analysis on the meal type level was conducted. Experienced in-the-moment eating happiness significantly varied by meal type consumed, F (4, 1039) = 11.75, p < 0.001. Frequencies of meal type consumption ranged from snacks being the most frequently logged meal type ( n = 332; see also Table ) to afternoon tea being the least logged meal type ( n = 27). Figure illustrates the wide dispersion within as well as between different meal types. Afternoon tea ( M = 82.41, SD = 15.26), dinner ( M = 81.47, SD = 14.73), and snacks ( M = 79.45, SD = 14.94) showed eating happiness values above the grand mean, whereas breakfast ( M = 74.28, SD = 16.35) and lunch ( M = 73.09, SD = 18.99) were below the eating happiness mean. Comparisons between meal types showed that eating happiness for snacks was significantly higher than for lunch t(533) = −4.44, p = 0.001, d = −0.38 and breakfast, t(567) = −3.78, p = 0.001, d = −0.33. However, this was also true for dinner, which induced greater eating happiness than lunch t(446) = −5.48, p < 0.001, d = −0.50 and breakfast, t(480) = −4.90, p < 0.001, d = −0.46. Finally, eating happiness for afternoon tea was greater than for lunch t(228) = −2.83, p = 0.047, d = −0.50. All other comparisons did not reach significance, t ≤ 2.49, p  ≥ 0.093.

Control Analyses

In order to test for a potential confounding effect between experienced eating happiness, food categories, and meal type, additional control analyses within meal types were conducted. Comparing experienced eating happiness for dinner and lunch suggested that dinner did not trigger a happiness spill-over effect specific to vegetables since the foods consumed at dinner were generally associated with greater happiness than those consumed at other eating occasions (Supplementary Table ). Moreover, the relative frequency of vegetables consumed at dinner (73%, n = 180 out of 245) and at lunch were comparable (69%, n  = 140 out of 203), indicating that the observed happiness-vegetables link does not seem to be mainly a meal type confounding effect.

Since the present study focuses on "food effects" (Level 1) rather than "person effects" (Level 2), we analysed the data at the food item level. However, participants who were generally overall happier with their eating could have inflated the observed happiness scores for certain food categories. In order to account for person-level effects, happiness scores were person-mean centred and thereby adjusted for mean level differences in happiness. The person-mean centred happiness scores ( M ) represent the difference between the individual's average happiness score (across all single in-the-moment happiness scores per food category) and the single happiness scores of the individual within the respective food category. The centred scores indicate whether the single in-the-moment happiness score was above (indicated by positive values) or below (indicated by negative values) the individual person-mean. As Table depicts, the control analyses with centred values yielded highly similar results. Vegetables were again associated on average with more happiness than other food categories (although people might differ in their general eating happiness). An additional conducted ANOVA with person-centred happiness values as dependent variables and food categories as independent variables provided also a highly similar pattern of results. Replicating the previously reported analysis, eating happiness differed significantly across all 14 food categories, F(13, 2129) = 1.94, p = 0.023, and post hoc analysis did not yield significant differences in experienced eating happiness between food categories, p ≥ 0.14. Moreover, fruits and vegetables were associated with high happiness values, and "unhealthy" food choices such as sweets did not differ in experienced happiness from "healthy" food choices such as fruits or vegetables. The only difference between the previous and control analysis was that vegetables ( M cwc = 1.16, SD = 15.14) gained slightly in importance for eating-related happiness, whereas fruits ( M cwc = −0.65, SD = 13.21), salty extras ( M cwc = −0.07, SD = 8.01), and pastries ( M cwc = −2.39, SD  = 18.26) became slightly less important.

Discussion

This study is the first, to our knowledge, that investigated in-the-moment experienced eating happiness in real time and real life using EMA based self-report and imagery covering the complete diversity of food intake. The present results add to and extend previous findings by suggesting that fruit and vegetable consumption has immediate beneficial psychological effects. Overall, of 14 different main food categories, vegetables consumption contributed the largest share to eating happiness measured across eight days. Thus, in addition to the investment in future well-being indicated by previous research, "healthy" food choices seem to be an investment in the in-the moment well-being.

Importantly, although many cultures convey the belief that eating certain foods has a greater hedonic and mood boosting effect, the present results suggest that this might not reflect actual in-the-moment experiences accurately. Even though people often have a spontaneous "unhealthy = tasty" intuition, thus indicating that a stronger happiness boosting effect of "unhealthy" food is to be expected, the induced eating happiness of sweets did not differ on average from "healthy" food choices such as fruits or vegetables. This was also true for other stereotypically "unhealthy" foods such as pastries and salty extras, which did not show the expected greater boosting effect on happiness. Moreover, analyses on the meal type level support this notion, since snacks, despite their overall positive effect, were not the most psychologically beneficial meal type, i.e., dinner had a comparable "happiness" signature to snacking. Taken together, "healthy choices" seem to be also "happy choices" and at least comparable to or even higher in their hedonic value as compared to stereotypical "unhealthy" food choices.

In general, eating happiness was high, which concurs with previous research from field studies with generally healthy participants. De Castro, Bellisle, and Dalix examined weekly food diaries from 54 French subjects and found that most of the meals were rated as appealing. Also, the observed differences in average eating happiness for the 14 different food categories, albeit statistically significant, were comparable small. One could argue that this simply indicates that participants avoided selecting bad food. Alternatively, this might suggest that the type of food or food categories are less decisive for experienced eating happiness than often assumed. This relates to recent findings in the field of comfort and emotional eating. Many people believe that specific types of food have greater comforting value. Also in research, the foods eaten as response to negative emotional strain, are typically characterised as being high-caloric because such foods are assumed to provide immediate psycho-physical benefits. However, comparing different food types did not provide evidence for the notion that they differed in their provided comfort; rather, eating in general led to significant improvements in mood. This is mirrored in the present findings. Comparing the eating happiness of "healthy" food choices such as fruits and vegetables to that of "unhealthy" food choices such as sweets shows remarkably similar patterns as, on average, they were associated with high eating happiness and their range of experiences ranged from very negative to very positive.

This raises the question of why the idea that we can eat indulgent food to compensate for life's mishaps is so prevailing. In an innovative experimental study, Adriaanse, Prinsen, de Witt Huberts, de Ridder, and Evers led participants believe that they overate. Those who characterised themselves as emotional eaters falsely attributed their over-consumption to negative emotions, demonstrating a "confabulation"-effect. This indicates that people might have restricted self-knowledge and that recalled eating episodes suffer from systematic recall biases. Moreover, Boelsma, Brink, Stafleu, and Hendriks examined postprandial subjective wellness and objective parameters (e.g., ghrelin, insulin, glucose) after standardised breakfast intakes and did not find direct correlations. This suggests that the impact of different food categories on wellness might not be directly related to biological effects but rather due to conditioning as food is often paired with other positive experienced situations (e.g., social interactions) or to placebo effects. Moreover, experimental and field studies indicate that not only negative, but also positive, emotions trigger eating. One may speculate that selective attention might contribute to the "myth" of comfort food in that people attend to the consumption effect of "comfort" food in negative situation but neglect the effect in positive ones.

The present data also show that eating behaviour in the real world is a complex behaviour with many different aspects. People make more than 200 food decisions a day which poses a great challenge for the measurement of eating behaviour. Studies often assess specific food categories such as fruit and vegetable consumption using Food Frequency Questionnaires, which has clear advantages in terms of cost-effectiveness. However, focusing on selective aspects of eating and food choices might provide only a selective part of the picture. It is important to note that focusing solely on the "unhealthy" food choices such as sweets would have led to the conclusion that they have a high "indulgent" value. To be able to draw conclusions about which foods make people happy, the relation of different food categories needs to be considered. The more comprehensive view, considering the whole dietary behaviour across eating occasions, reveals that "healthy" food choices actually contributed the biggest share to the total experienced eating happiness. Thus, for a more comprehensive understanding of how eating behaviours are regulated, more complete and sensitive measures of the behaviour are necessary. Developments in mobile technologies hold great promise for feasible dietary assessment based on image-assisted methods.

As fruits and vegetables evoked high in-the-moment happiness experiences, one could speculate that these cumulate and have spill-over effects on subsequent general well-being, including life satisfaction across time. Combing in-the-moment measures with longitudinal perspectives might be a promising avenue for future studies for understanding the pathways from eating certain food types to subjective well-being. In the literature different pathways are discussed, including physiological and biochemical aspects of specific food elements or nutrients.

The present EMA based data also revealed that eating happiness varied greatly within the 14 food categories and meal types. As within food category variance represented more than two third of the total observed variance, happiness varied according to nutritional characteristics and meal type; however, a myriad of factors present in the natural environment can affect each and every meal. Thus, widening the "nourishment" perspective by including how much, when, where, how long, and with whom people eat might tell us more about experienced eating happiness. Again, mobile, in-the-moment assessment opens the possibility of assessing the behavioural signature of eating in real life. Moreover, individual factors such as eating motives, habitual eating styles, convenience, and social norms are likely to contribute to eating happiness variance.

A key strength of this study is that it was the first to examine experienced eating happiness in non-clinical participants using EMA technology and imagery to assess food intake. Despite this strength, there are some limitations to this study that affect the interpretation of the results. In the present study, eating happiness was examined on a food based level. This neglects differences on the individual level and might be examined in future multilevel studies. Furthermore, as a main aim of this study was to assess real life eating behaviour, the "natural" observation level is the meal, the psychological/ecological unit of eating, rather than food categories or nutrients. Therefore, we cannot exclude that specific food categories may have had a comparably higher impact on the experienced happiness of the whole meal. Sample size and therefore Type I and Type II error rates are of concern. Although the total number of observations was higher than in previous studies (see for example, Boushey et al. for a review), the number of participants was small but comparable to previous studies in this field. Small sample sizes can increase error rates because the number of persons is more decisive than the number of nested observations. Specially, nested data can seriously increase Type I error rates, which is rather unlikely to be the case in the present study. Concerning Type II error rates, Aarts et al. illustrated for lower ICCs that adding extra observations per participant also increases power, particularly in the lower observation range. Considering the ICC and the number of observations per participant, one could argue that the power in the present study is likely to be sufficient to render the observed null-differences meaningful. Finally, the predominately white and well-educated sample does limit the degree to which the results can be generalised to the wider community; these results warrant replication with a more representative sample.

Despite these limitations, we think that our study has implications for both theory and practice. The cumulative evidence of psychological benefits from healthy food choices might offer new perspectives for health promotion and public-policy programs. Making people aware of the "healthy = happy" association supported by empirical evidence provides a distinct and novel perspective to the prevailing "unhealthy = tasty" folk intuition and could foster eating choices that increase both in-the-moment happiness and future well-being. Furthermore, the present research lends support to the advocated paradigm shift from "food as health" to "food as well-being" which entails a supporting and encouraging rather constraining and limiting view on eating behaviour.

Methods

The study conformed with the Declaration of Helsinki. All study protocols were approved by University of Konstanz's Institutional Review Board and were conducted in accordance with guidelines and regulations. Upon arrival, all participants signed a written informed consent.

Participants

Thirty-eight participants (28 females: average age = 24.47, SD  = 5.88, range = 18-48 years) from the University of Konstanz assessed their eating behaviour in close to real time and in their natural environment using an event-based ambulatory assessment method (EMA). No participant dropped out or had to be excluded. Thirty-three participants were students, with 52.6% studying psychology. As compensation, participants could choose between taking part in a lottery (4 × 25€) or receiving course credits (2 hours).

Procedure

Participants were recruited through leaflets distributed at the university and postings on Facebook groups. Prior to participation, all participants gave written informed consent. Participants were invited to the laboratory for individual introductory sessions. During this first session, participants installed the application movisensXS (version 0.8.4203) on their own smartphones and downloaded the study survey (movisensXS Library v4065). In addition, they completed a short baseline questionnaire, including demographic variables like age, gender, education, and eating principles. Participants were instructed to log every eating occasion immediately before eating by using the smartphone to indicate the type of meal, take pictures of the food, and describe its main components using a free input field. Fluid intake was not assessed. Participants were asked to record their food intake on eight consecutive days. After finishing the study, participants were invited back to the laboratory for individual final interviews.

Measures

Immediately before eating participants were asked to indicate the type of meal with the following five options: breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, snack. In Germany, "afternoon tea" is called "Kaffee & Kuchen" which directly translates as "coffee & cake". It is similar to the idea of a traditional "afternoon tea" meal in UK. Specifically, in Germany, people have "Kaffee & Kuchen" in the afternoon (between 4-5 pm) and typically coffee (or tea) is served with some cake or cookies. Dinner in Germany is a main meal with mainly savoury food.

After each meal, participants were asked to rate their meal on three dimensions. They rated (1) how much they enjoyed the meal, (2) how pleased they were with their meal, and (3) how tasty their meal was. Ratings were given on a scale of one to 100. For reliability analysis, Cronbach's Alpha was calculated to assess the internal consistency of the three items. Overall Cronbach's alpha was calculated with α = 0.87. In addition, the average of the 38 Cronbach's alpha scores calculated at the person level also yielded a satisfactory value with α = 0.83 ( SD  = 0.24). Thirty-two of 38 participants showed a Cronbach's alpha value above 0.70 (range = 0.42-0.97). An overall score of experienced happiness of eating was computed using the average of the three questions concerning the meals' enjoyment, pleasure, and tastiness.

Analytical procedure

The food pictures and descriptions of their main components provided by the participants were subsequently coded by independent and trained raters. Following a standardised manual, additional components displayed in the picture were added to the description by the raters. All consumed foods were categorised into 14 different food categories (see Table ) derived from the food classification system designed by the German Nutrition Society (DGE) and based on the existing food categories of the German Nutrient Database (Max Rubner Institut). Liquid intake and preparation method were not assessed. Therefore, fats and additional recipe ingredients were not included in further analyses, because they do not represent main elements of food intake. Further, salty extras were added to the categorisation.

No participant dropped out or had to be excluded due to high missing rates. Missing values were below 5% for all variables. The compliance rate at the meal level cannot be directly assessed since the numbers of meals and snacks can vary between as well as within persons (between days). As a rough compliance estimate, the numbers of meals that are expected from a "normative" perspective during the eight observation days can be used as a comparison standard (8 x breakfast, 8 × lunch, 8 × dinner = 24 meals). On average, the participants reported M = 6.3 breakfasts ( SD = 2.3), M = 5.3 lunches ( SD = 1.8), and M = 6.5 dinners ( SD = 2.0). In comparison to the "normative" expected 24 meals, these numbers indicate a good compliance (approx. 75%) with a tendency to miss six meals during the study period (approx. 25%). However, the "normative" expected 24 meals for the study period might be too high since participants might also have skipped meals (e.g. breakfast). Also, the present compliance rates are comparable to other studies. For example, Elliston et al. recorded 3.3 meal/snack reports per day in an Australian adult sample and Casperson et al. recorded 2.2 meal reports per day in a sample of adolescents. In the present study, on average, M = 3.4 ( SD  = 1.35) meals or snacks were reported per day. These data indicate overall a satisfactory compliance rate and did not indicate selective reporting of certain food items.

To graphically visualise data, Tableau (version 10.1) was used and for further statistical analyses, IBM SPSS Statistics (version 24 for Windows).

Data availability

The dataset generated and analysed during the current study is available from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.

Electronic supplementary material

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research within the project SmartAct (Grant 01EL1420A, granted to B.R. & H.S.). The funding source had no involvement in the study's design; the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; the writing of the report; or the decision to submit this article for publication. We thank Gudrun Sproesser, Helge Giese, and Angela Whale for their valuable support.

Author Contributions

B.R. & H.S. developed the study concept. All authors participated in the generation of the study design. D.W., K.V., L.K. & K.Z. conducted the study, including participant recruitment and data collection, under the supervision of B.R. & H.S.; D.W. & K.V. conducted data analyses. D.W. & K.V. prepared the first manuscript draft, and B.R. & H.S. provided critical revisions. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript for submission.

Notes

Competing Interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Footnotes

Deborah R. Wahl and Karoline Villinger contributed equally to this work.
Electronic supplementary material
Supplementary information accompanies this paper at 10.1038/s41598-017-17262-9.

Publisher's note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

References

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Healthy food choices are happy food choices: Evidence from a real life sample using smartphone based assessments

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Research suggests that "healthy" food choices such as eating fruits and vegetables have not only physical but also mental health benefits and might be a long-term investment in future well-being. This view contrasts with the belief that high-caloric foods taste better, make us happy, and alleviate a negative mood.

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Nutrition is something I have always been interested in, so because of the connection between Sanatana Dharma and our physical health, I thought it would be interesting to research if happier people lived healthier lifestyles. In an article by Harvard Health, I learned that people who are happier actually tend to display healthier characteristics. In a different article from the NIH, I learned that eating healthy and staying active will in turn improve your happiness. This shows the connection between Sanatana Dharma and physical health because they both help each other. By being happy, you can physically better yourself, and vice versa.

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Want to feel better and improve your health? Start by focusing on the things that bring you happiness. Scientific evidence suggests that positive emotions can help make life longer and healthier.

But fleeting positive emotions aren't enough. Lowering your stress levels over a period of years with a positive outlook and relaxation techniques could reduce your risk of health problems.

Pathways to happiness

In an early phase of positive psychology research, University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson of the University of Michigan chose three pathways to examine:

Feeling good. Seeking pleasurable emotions and sensations, from the hedonistic model of happiness put forth by Epicurus, which focused on reaching happiness by maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain.

Engaging fully. Pursuing activities that engage you fully, from the influential research by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. For decades, Csikszentmihalyi explored people's satisfaction in their everyday activities, finding that people report the greatest satisfaction when they are totally immersed in and concentrating on what they are doing - he dubbed this state of intense absorption "flow."

Doing good. Searching for meaning outside yourself, tracing back to Aristotle's notion of eudemonia, which emphasized knowing your true self and acting in accordance with your virtues.

Through focus groups and testing hundreds of volunteers, they found that each of these pathways individually contributes to life satisfaction.

Things that won't make you happy

People tend to be poor judges of what will make them happy. Here are some widely held myths about what will bring happiness:

Money and material things. The question of whether money can buy happiness has, for more than 30 years, been addressed by the "Easterlin paradox," a concept developed by economist Richard Easterlin. His research showed that people in poor countries are happier when their basic necessities are covered. But any money beyond that doesn't make much difference in happiness level. This idea has been challenged periodically, as in 2008 when two University of Pennsylvania researchers analyzed Gallup poll data from around the world. They showed, in contrast to Easterlin's work, that people in wealthier countries are happier in general. The two studies were not directly comparable in method, however. And Easterlin points out that the new study may be flawed by cultural bias, as people from different countries may have different ways of answering questions about wealth and happiness.

Youth. Being young and physically attractive has little or no bearing on happiness. In a study published by Richard Easterlin in 2006 in the Journal of Economic Psychology, not only did being young fail to contribute to happiness, but adults grew steadily happier as they moved into and through middle age. After that, happiness levels began to decline slowly as health problems and other life problems emerged.

Children. Children can be a tremendous source of joy and fulfillment, but their day-to-day care is quite demanding and can increase stress, financial pressures, and marital strife. When ranking their happiness during daily activities, mothers report being more happy eating, exercising, shopping, napping, or watching TV than when spending time with their children. In several studies, marital satisfaction declines after the first child is born and only recovers after the last child leaves home. Personal relationships of all types are important, however. In studies, being married, having more friends, and having sexual intercourse more often are all moderately or strongly associated with happiness.

How do you know if you're in flow?

You lose awareness of time. You aren't watching the clock, and hours can pass like minutes. As filmmaker George Lucas puts it, talent is "a combination of something you love a great deal and something you can lose yourself in - something that you can start at 9 o'clock, look up from your work and it's 10 o'clock at night ... ."

You aren't thinking about yourself. You aren't focused on your comfort, and you aren't wondering how you look or how your actions will be perceived by others. Your awareness of yourself is only in relation to the activity itself, such as your fingers on a piano keyboard, or the way you position a knife to cut vegetables, or the balance of your body parts as you ski or surf.

You aren't interrupted by extraneous thoughts. You aren't thinking about such mundane matters as your shopping list or what to wear tomorrow.

You are active. Flow activities aren't passive, and you have some control over what you are doing.

You work effortlessly. Flow activities require effort (usually more effort than involved in typical daily experience). Although you may be working harder than usual, at flow moments everything is "clicking" and feels almost effortless.

Disclaimer:
As a service to our readers, Harvard Health Publishing provides access to our library of archived content. Please note the date of last review or update on all articles. No content on this site, regardless of date, should ever be used as a substitute for direct medical advice from your doctor or other qualified clinician.

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The happiness-health connection - Harvard Health

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Want to feel better and improve your health? Start by focusing on the things that bring you happiness. Scientific evidence suggests that positive emotions can help make life longer and healthier. But fleeting positive emotions aren't enough.

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When looking over the slides on Sanatana Dharma, I saw that there was one about it being “that which binds us all” and that reminded me of an activity we did in ELA once. Basically there were a few prompts on the board (I like... I hope... I wish... I have... I worry... and maybe some more I can’t remember). So what we did was that we stood in a circle, and one person would be holding a ball of yarn and start with one of the prompts. Like “I worry about my grades.” Then anyone else who worried about their grades would raise their hands and the person would pass (or throw) the ball of yarn to them (while still holding on to part of the string) After that the next person would go and so on. At the end of the activity there was a big web of yarn that connected everyone. So I think this kind of relates to Satana Dharma and the idea of everyone being connected, although it’s on a less “ultimate truth level” and more on a material level.

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Moksha is the end of all suffering. We attain Moksha once we have the realization that we are Brahman.

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In the Vedic wisdom tradition, moksha is the liberation of the soul from the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, or samsara. It is considered to be the end of all suffering. According to Advaita Vedanta, we can attain moksha through the realization that we are, in fact, Brahman - the source of all that is. When we achieve this understanding through direct personal experience, we inherently know, at the deepest level, that what we considered to be our reality is, in reality, an illusion. Our worldly conception of self is replaced with the realization of our true nature. It is through this understanding that we experience liberation.

The purpose of exploring the realm of emotional healing is to end the seemingly endless cycle of perpetual emotional suffering. Many of us have adopted painful limiting beliefs as "our story" of who we are, how we got to be this way, and why we feel justified or compelled to continue certain behaviors. If we stay stuck in our story, we are certain to repeat similar experiences, whether in this lifetime or others that may follow. The bottom line is this: unless we make a conscious choice at some point in our lives to uncover, identify, mobilize, and release the stories and limiting beliefs we have come to hold true of ourselves, we will surely remain trapped in an interminable state of emotional samsara.

Seeking Emotional Healing Tools
On the path of liberation, foundational lifestyle practices such as yoga and meditation are often the catalyst for transformation. Yoga and meditation alone, however, are often not enough to integrate the toxic emotional residue that remains after you have experienced painful or traumatic life circumstances. It is at this juncture that seeking emotional healing tools and techniques to help you along your journey will bring you closer to your desired outcome.

There are many different approaches to doing emotional healing work and it is important that you find a therapist, coach or program that best suits your needs. Whatever path you choose, the deepest, most profound work that lies in wait is to heal yourself from the inside out.

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Moksha: Ending the Cycle of Emotional Pain

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In the Vedic wisdom tradition, moksha is the liberation of the soul from the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, or samsara. It is considered to be the end of all suffering. According to Advaita Vedanta, we can attain moksha through the realization that we are, in fact, Brahman - the source of all...

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Kissan Protests in Delhi and the 2020 Farmer Bill

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Kissan Protests in Delhi and the 2020 Farmer Bill

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If you have kept up with Indian news, than you may have heard of the Farmer Protests in Delhi, India. Most of these farmers are from states like Punjab and Haryana, which produce  a lot of India's grain. They are protesting against a bill put out by the Modi government called the Farm Bill 2020. This bill would allow big agribusiness corporations to negotiate prices with the farmers.  This would allow for more inter-state trade. This would also give more variety in produce to the public as well as help farmers get better prices. However, because the corporations have more money and hence more influence, they would be  a major player in deciding the prices. The farmers are also concerned that since there is no base price(price government gives to farmers). This keeps the prices of crops steady. However corporate greed could potentially put his at risk as the government since the bill doesn't state a specific starting price.  States would also lose out on money because they would be able to charge farmer's fees to sell in state markets

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Farmers protest in Hisar, Haryana. (Credits: PTI)

NEW DELHI: Amidst protest from opposition and a section of farmer's organisations, the Monsoon Session of the Lok Sabha passed three agriculture sector bills which will replace the existing ordinances once they are passed by the Rajya Sabha also. On Thursday, SAD leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal resigned from the Union council of ministers protesting against the bills which she said are anti-farmer and will destroy the agriculture sector in Punjab. Here is all you need to know about the three bills:
1. Bill on agri market
Farmer's Produce Trade and Commerce(Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020
Provisions
* To create an ecosystem where farmers and traders enjoy the freedom to sell and purchase farm produce outide registered 'mandis' under states' APMCs.
* To promote barrier-free inter-state and intra-state trade of farmers' produce
* To reduce marketing/transportation costs and help farmers in getting better prices
* To provide a facilitative framework for electronic trading
Opposition
* States will lose revenue as they won't be able to collect 'mandi fees' if farmers sell their produce outside registered APMC markets.
* What happens to 'commission agents' in states if entire farm trade moves out of mandis?
* It may eventually end the MSP-based procurement system.
* Electronic trading like in e-NAM uses physical 'mandi' structure. What will happen to e-NAM if 'mandis' are destroyed in absence of trading?

2. Bill on contract farming
The Farmer (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020
Provisions
* Farmers can enter into a contract with agribusiness firms, processors, wholesalers, exporters or large retailers for sale of future farming produce at a pre-agreed price
* Marginal and small farmers, with land less than five hectares, to gain via aggregation and contract (Marginal and small farmers account for 86% of total farmers in India)
* To transfer the risk of market unpredictability from farmers to sponsors
* To enable farmers to access modern tech and get better inputs
* To reduce cost of marketing and boost farmer's income.
* Farmers can engage in direct marketing by eliminating intermediaries for full price realisation
* Effective dispute resolution mechanism with redressal timelines.
Opposition
* Farmers in contract farming arrangements will be the weaker players in terms of their ability to negotiate what they need
* The sponsors may not like to deal with a multitude of small and marginal farmers
* Being big private companies, exporters, wholesalers and processors, the sponsors will have an edge in disputes.
3. Bill relating to commodities
The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill, 2020
Provisions
* To remove commodities like cereals, pulses, oilseeds, onion and potatoes from the list of essential commodities. It will do away with the imposition of stockholding limits on such items except under "extraordinary circumstances" like war
* This provision will attract private sector/FDI into farm sector as it will remove fears of private investors of excessive regulatory interference in business operations.
* To bring investment for farm infrastructure like cold storages, and modernising food supply chain.
* To help both farmers and consumers by bringing in price stability.
* To create competitive market environment and cut wastage of farm produce.
Opposition
* Price limits for "extraordinary circumstances" are so high that they are likely to be never triggered.
* Big companies will have the freedom to stock commodities- it means they will dictate terms to farmers which may lead to less prices for the cultivators.
* Recent decision on export ban on onion creates doubt on its implementation.

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What is farm bill 2020: Pros & cons of three farm bills introduced in India | India News - Times of India

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Farmers protest in Hisar, Haryana. (Credits: PTI) NEW DELHI: Amidst protest from opposition and a section of farmer's organisations, the Monsoon Session of the Lok Sabha passed three agriculture sector bills which will replace the existing ordinances once they are passed by the Rajya Sabha also.

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The Importance of Prayer and A Relationship With God

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The Importance of Prayer and A Relationship With God

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When we had the discussion about why we pray and about our personal connection to god, I realized that prayer is more than just asking for what you want. We learned about the three stages of prayer: petition, intercession, and adoration. The quote is a perfect reminder of why we pray and its importance.

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In South Africa, there have been numerous poachers who have gone after animals such as rhinos and lions. One of them in Kruger Park, ended up being eaten by the very same animals he once hunted.

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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

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Regular physical activity is one of the most important things you can do for your health. Being physically active can improve your brain health, help manage weight, reduce the risk of disease, strengthen bones and muscles, and improve your ability to do everyday activities.

Adults who sit less and do any amount of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity gain some health benefits. Only a few lifestyle choices have as large an impact on your health as physical activity.

Everyone can experience the health benefits of physical activity - age, abilities, ethnicity, shape, or size do not matter.

Immediate Benefits

Some benefits of physical activity on brain health [PDF-14.4MB] happen right after a session of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. Benefits include improved thinking or cognition for children 6 to 13 years of age and reduced short-term feelings of anxiety for adults. Regular physical activity can help keep your thinking, learning, and judgment skills sharp as you age. It can also reduce your risk of depression and anxiety and help you sleep better.

Both eating patterns and physical activity routines play a critical role in weight management. You gain weight when you consume more calories through eating and drinking than the amount of calories you burn, including those burned during physical activity.

To maintain your weight: Work your way up to 150 minutes a week of moderate physical activity, which could include dancing or yard work. You could achieve the goal of 150 minutes a week with 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week.

People vary greatly in how much physical activity they need for weight management. You may need to be more active than others to reach or maintain a healthy weight.

To lose weight and keep it off: You will need a high amount of physical activity unless you also adjust your eating patterns and reduce the amount of calories you're eating and drinking. Getting to and staying at a healthy weight requires both regular physical activity and healthy eating.

See more information about:

Haven't Been Active in a While?

See these tips on getting started.

Reduce Your Health Risk

The good news [PDF-14.5MB] is that moderate physical activity, such as brisk walking, is generally safe for most people.

Cardiovascular Disease

Heart disease and stroke are two leading causes of death in the United States. Getting at least 150 minutes a week of moderate physical activity can put you at a lower risk for these diseases. You can reduce your risk even further with more physical activity. Regular physical activity can also lower your blood pressure and improve your cholesterol levels.

Type 2 Diabetes and Metabolic Syndrome

Regular physical activity can reduce your risk of developing type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is some combination of too much fat around the waist, high blood pressure, low high-density lipoproteins (HDL) cholesterol, high triglycerides, or high blood sugar. People start to see benefits at levels from physical activity even without meeting the recommendations for 150 minutes a week of moderate physical activity. Additional amounts of physical activity seem to lower risk even more.

Infectious Diseases

Physical activity may help reduce the risk of serious outcomes from infectious diseases, including COVID-19, the flu, and pneumonia. For example:

People who do little or no physical activity are more likely to get very sick from COVID-19 than those who are physically active. A CDC systematic review [PDF-931KB] found that physical activity is associated with a decrease in COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths, while inactivity increases that risk.

People who are more active may be less likely to die from flu or pneumonia. A CDC study found that adults who meet the aerobic and muscle-strengthening physical activity guidelines are about half as likely to die from flu and pneumonia as adults who meet neither guideline.

Some Cancers

Being physically active lowers your risk for developing several common cancers. Adults who participate in greater amounts of physical activity have reduced risks of developing cancers of the:

Bladder

Breast

Colon (proximal and distal)

Endometrium

Esophagus (adenocarcinoma)

Kidney

Lung

Stomach (cardia and non-cardia adenocarcinoma)

If you are a cancer survivor, getting regular physical activity not only helps give you a better quality of life, but also improves your physical fitness.

Strengthen Your Bones and Muscles

As you age, it's important to protect your bones, joints, and muscles - they support your body and help you move. Keeping bones, joints, and muscles healthy can help ensure that you're able to do your daily activities and be physically active.

Muscle-strengthening activities like lifting weights can help you increase or maintain your muscle mass and strength. This is important for older adults who experience reduced muscle mass and muscle strength with aging. Slowly increasing the amount of weight and number of repetitions you do as part of muscle strengthening activities will give you even more benefits, no matter your age.

Improve Your Ability to do Daily Activities and Prevent Falls

Everyday activities include climbing stairs, grocery shopping, or playing with your grandchildren. Being unable to do everyday activities is called a functional limitation. Physically active middle-aged or older adults have a lower risk of functional limitations than people who are inactive.

For older adults, doing a variety of physical activity improves physical function and decreases the risk of falls or injury from a fall. Include physical activities such as aerobic, muscle strengthening, and balance training. Multicomponent physical activity can be done at home or in a community setting as part of a structured program.

Hip fracture is a serious health condition that can result from a fall. Breaking a hip have life-changing negative effects, especially if you're an older adult. Physically active people have a lower risk of hip fracture than inactive people.

Increase Your Chances of Living Longer

See physical activity recommendations for different groups, including:

An estimated 110,000 deaths per year could be prevented if US adults ages 40 and older increased their moderate-to-vigorous physical activity by a small amount. Even 10 minutes more a day would make a difference.

Taking more steps a day also helps lower the risk of premature death from all causes. For adults younger than 60, the risk of premature death leveled off at about 8,000 to 10,000 steps per day. For adults 60 and older, the risk of premature death leveled off at about 6,000 to 8,000 steps per day.

Manage Chronic Health Conditions & Disabilities

Regular physical activity can help people manage existing chronic conditions and disabilities. For example, regular physical activity can:

Connect with Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity

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Regular physical activity improves your brain health, helps with weight management, reduces disease, strengthens bones and muscles, and improves your ability to do everyday activities. Learn more.

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Connection - Prayer Through Talking to Yourself

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Connection - Prayer Through Talking to Yourself

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Last week, I thought it was very interesting to learn about how prayer through talking to God inside ourselves is beneficial! I wanted to learn more, so I researched it. I learned that by talking to yourself, you can become more self-positive and self-confident. This empowerment is very good for us. Studies have shown that people that tell themselves "I can do this," are usually successful! I thought this was similar to learning about prayer through ourselves to God because they were both simpler, easier-to-connect ways to do things.

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Talking to oneself can influence behavior and cognition. Credit... Getty Images

A stranger approached me at a grocery store. "Do you need help finding something?" he asked. At first, I wasn't sure what he meant. Then the realization kicked in: I was talking out loud, to myself, in public. It was a habit I'd grown so comfortable with that I didn't even realize I was doing it.

The fairly common habit of talking aloud to yourself is what psychologists call external self-talk. And although self-talk is sometimes looked at as just an eccentric quirk, research has found that it can influence behavior and cognition.

"Language provides us with this tool to gain distance from our own experiences when we're reflecting on our lives. And that's really why it's useful," said Ethan Kross, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan.

When we talk to ourselves we're trying to see things more objectively, Mr. Kross said, so it matters how you talk to yourself. The two types of self-talk you're likely most familiar with are instructional self-talk, like talking yourself through a task, and motivational self-talk, like telling yourself, "I can do this." It might be corny, but motivating yourself out loud can work.

One study published in Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences researched the effects of both motivational and instructional self-talk on subjects playing basketball. It found that players passed the basketball faster when they motivated themselves through the task out loud.

Even how you refer to yourself when talking to yourself can make a difference. Mr. Kross and his colleagues studied the impact of internal self-talk - talking to yourself in your head - to see how it can affect attitudes and feelings. They found that when their subjects talked about themselves in the second or third person - for example, "You can do this" or "Jane can do this" instead of "I can do this" - not only did they feel less anxiety while performing, but their peers also rated their performances better. Mr. Kross said this was because of self-distancing: focusing on the self from the distanced perspective of a third person, even though that person is you.

"In terms of why psychological distance helps, the example I like to give is to think about a time with a friend or loved one ruminating about a problem," Mr. Kross said. "As an outsider, it's relatively easy for you to advise them through that problem. One of the key reasons why we're so able to advise others on a problem is because we're not sucked into those problems. We can think more clearly because we have distance from the experience."

So if you're frazzled and need a motivational pep talk, you might consider giving it in the second or third person, which can help you look at the situation from a logical, objective perspective rather than an emotional, biased one.

Beyond motivational self-talk, talking to yourself out loud in an instructional way can speed up cognitive abilities in relation to problem-solving and task performance.

So, for example, when you're searching for that item you just can't find at the grocery store, talking to yourself out loud may help you find it faster. This is because of the feedback hypothesis.

"The idea is, if you hear a word, does that help you see something?" said Gary Lupyan, a researcher and psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

According to the feedback hypothesis, the name of an item and its label make you think of what that item looks like. "This helps you distinguish it from other items with different names," Mr. Lupyan said.

Mr. Lupyan wanted to test the feedback hypothesis with self-talk. In a series of experiments, he and his team asked subjects to search for different objects in different situations. In one experiment, subjects were asked to search for a picture of a specific item, like a banana, among 20 pictures of random items.

"We had some of the subjects say the name of the object out loud to themselves," he said. "The idea was, does saying the name actually help you activate its visual features?"

Mr. Lupyan and his colleagues found that when subjects said the word "banana" before searching for a picture of one, they found the picture faster and more accurately. Saying the word out loud, the study found, made the subjects more aware of its physical traits, which then made the banana stand out among other objects.

It's worth noting, however, that this type of self-talk isn't as effective if you don't know what the item looks like. In other words, if you're searching for a papaya and you have no idea what a papaya looks like, asking yourself, "Where are the papayas?" probably won't do much for you.

"The finding was that saying a name out loud helps, but only with objects they have familiarity with," Mr. Lupyan said. Without that familiarity, talking to yourself out loud can slow you down, he added.

Instructive self-talk can be useful beyond finding your lost car keys or picking out a friend in a crowd. The aforementioned basketball study also found that players passed and shot the basketball more accurately when they instructed themselves through the task out loud, suggesting that talking to yourself about what you're doing can keep you focused. The study concluded that motivational self-talk worked best on tasks based on speed, strength and power, while instructional self-talk worked best with tasks that involved focus, strategy and technique. In the real world, this might translate to parallel parking, following a recipe or putting together an Ikea side table.

"My bet is that self-talk works best on problems where you're trying to stay on task and there are possible distractions," Mr. Lupyan said. "For tasks with a multistep sequence, talking to yourself out loud can help you keep out distractions and remind yourself where you are."

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The Benefits of Talking to Yourself (Published 2017)

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A stranger approached me at a grocery store. "Do you need help finding something?" he asked. At first, I wasn't sure what he meant. Then the realization kicked in: I was talking out loud, to myself, in public. It was a habit I'd grown so comfortable with that I didn't even realize I was doing it.

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Our relationship with God and Prayer

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Bhaya, Moha, Soka

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10-25-20_Sanatana Dharma and Mental Health

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Trigunas and our lifestyle

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10-11-20_Sanatana Dharma and Physical Health

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This story demonstrates the Law of Self-Effort. Kevin Mitnick was originally a convicted hacker, but then used his skills to create a security company. He also shared his experiences with other through writing multiple books.

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Who is Kevin Mitnick? Once the 'world's most famous hacker,' he is now a speaker, cybersecurity consultant, and a global authority on social engineering.

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Go through this chart and figure out which one you belong to in each of the 4 health related topics and see  what you can change to become more Saatvik

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Go through this chart and figure out which one you belong to in each of the 4 health related topics and see  what you can change to become more Saatvik

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Welcome to our Balavihar board! The topic for our class is Hindu Culture, and we've been exploring this through the form of "life lessons" each week. But where is the best arena to actually learn these lessons?? Well...it's in life! We will be using the space to share stories from our lives with each other.

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**Example sharing** Building resilience through self-effort

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**Example sharing** Building resilience through self-effort

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This article explores how some kids exposed to difficult situations end up coming out of the situations much stronger for it. Resilience is talked about as something that can be cultivated by looking at every negative event as an opportunity to learn and grow. This relates to what we learned in class about the Law of Karma (predetermined condition) and Law of Self-Effort (free will). This article inspires me to look at things with a positive and growth mindset always -- 1) because I am privileged to have things much easier than some of the kids stories shared, and 2) because it is how I can best exercise my self-effort to keep growing.

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Resilience is a set of skills—and psychologists know how you can learn them.

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Vasanas, Law of Karma, Law of Self Effort

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What is Sanatana Dharma, the 4 Yogas, the goal of Sanatana Dharma (Happiness!)

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Each week we will ask for 1-2 students to volunteer to share something in the next class related to any of the topics we have talked about so far this year.

We'll ask the student to create a post here, and then we'll let them present it in class for 3-5 minutes.

What can i share?  Sharing can be in any format you like! It can be a poem, a relevant article, a picture, a drawing / artwork, a video or sound bite of music. Be yourself! If this sticky note isn't enough space, there are options to link to other sites like Youtube or to upload a document.

How will presenting work? You'll have the floor to share with the class for 3-5 minutes. It would be great to hear about what you found or created, what you learned from it, and how it relates to the topics we've been discussing in class

What are the topics i can share on? We'll post a running list of topics around the board. Pick any one (or more!)