The intentional restriction of food intake to prevent weight gain or to promote weight loss. Restrained eating is consistently linked with overeating behaviors in response to negative psychological processes incurred by breaking self-imposed dietary boundaries and violating internal goals (Verzijl & Ahlich, 2018).

Small, evaporative molecules emanating from foods in our mouth while chewing that travel from the oral cavity through the nasopharynx subsequently stimulating receptors on the nose’s olfactory epithelium. Retronasal odors refer to objects inside the body and are thus principally related to foods only present during consumption (Boesvelt, 2017).

An appetite-related stimulus given to a human or animal that, because of its rewarding characteristics, influences repeated consumption and reinforces the probability of that consumption occurring again. In the Diet-Mental Health Relationship framework, reward refers to foods that influence positive motivational, learning, and memory properties within the brain that can potentially increase the probability and intensity of such foods being consumed again (i.e., positive reinforcement).

The robustness of a microbiota refers to the degree of change in the microbiota after a disturbance and its ability to recover from this impact. It is an intriguing scale because it depicts the ecosystem’s overall steady state or resilience; for example, the environment may not directly impact a specific species. However, the extinction of another species may result in the collapse of the entire ecosystem because the microbiota structure is not “robust” or is overly vulnerable.

The routine is the actual behavior or action that follows the cue. It’s the habitual activity that you perform in response to the cue.