In the office space I share with a collection of other freelancing nomads, we are equipped, beyond the desk and chair, with a soda stream and a coffee machine. There is a small kitchen too, but here I am mostly concerned with the gadgets.

From my modest desk in the middle of the room, I have observed an interesting and perhaps more than anecdotal trend. To excuse my apparent lack of attention to my work, I should add that both machines whizz and fizz so loudly that they are near impossible to ignore. Crouch behind my laptop and stare furiously at the screen as I may, I cannot help but notice the comings and goings.

Not that I object particularly, because the experience has been fruitful. What I realise, you see, is that the room could be divided into two camps – the corpulent and the slender. Noticeably it is the corpulent who stand up frequently from their desks and busy themselves at the machines. A cup of coffee here, a glass of fizzy water or something sweeter there – once an hour at least. By contrast, the lankier lot surface only every few hours – once in the morning for a small cup of coffee and then again around lunch. I did notice one of them snacking on an apple at his desk, but this was very much an exception.

The significance in this you ask? I speculate that it is possible to develop something of an addiction (possibly too strong a word) to having food or drink in your mouth. Afflicted with this addiction, you don’t like to let your mouth lie dormant for long stretches of time. For whatever reason, you feel the itch to consume. From where I sit I can only see what people drink, but I assume it also applies to food. There is enough office rustling to suggest lots of food ferreted away in desk drawers – rather like school children snuffling away Rolos in Maths.

Having seen this in other people, I started becoming very conscious of my own desk consumption habits. Which crowd did I fall into? Probably somewhere between the two: I am frequent tea drinker, but not on the hour and at least it’s herbal. Though I like to snack, I also have long stretches each day when I don’t eat at all. But it is helpful (and quite revealing) to be aware – and to that end …

An interesting exercise to try:

1. At work or at play, check yourself each time you make a move to get something to eat or drink.
2. Study your motives – thirst, hunger, boredom, awkwardness (we’ve all done that in the pub) or something else? Thirst and hunger should be the only motives you are willing to follow.
3. If you believe your motive is hunger, rate how hungry you are on a scale of 1 to 10. If this turns out to be less than 7, try not eating immediately but waiting for a little while longer.
4. If your score is 7 or above, then don’t snack at your desk or in front of the telly but go and sit down somewhere else to eat something more appealing and health-giving than yet another cup of tired coffee and stale digestive biscuit.
5. Consciously create periods of time during which you don’t eat anything at all – from 8am until 11am for example, or again from 4pm until dinner – and enjoy the sense of not consuming for a while.