Grab a fast food cheeseburger or a sticky-sweet pastry and you will feel an immediate sense of satisfaction and pleasure. But that happiness is short-lived and, if repeatedly indulged, can contribute to a poor health profile later in life that’s bound to leave you feeling bad. But how would you feel if you didn’t stop for that burger and, instead, cooked a healthy meal from scratch, or picked up a prepared vegetable salad and perhaps a serving of grilled chicken from the deli?

Much research has looked into why some of us make healthier lifestyle choices than others. A review of relevant literature by British researchers from the Universities of Kent and Reading, published in the Journal of Happiness Studies, found that the ability to delay gratification leads to more overall life satisfaction through healthier lifestyle choices

These researchers compared the lifetime satisfaction of those who followed healthier diets, engaged in more physical activity, and were able to maintain a long-term perspective as to the benefits of these lifestyle choices to those who made more indulgent choices for immediate satisfaction. They also looked at the effects on life satisfaction of individual ability to delay gratification, as well as the impact of their locus of control, or the degree to which they felt in control of and responsible for their own lives.