What if there was an effective method of losing weight out there that required nothing from you but to simply think about the food you’re about to eat? Recent studies from Carnegie Mellon University report that mental eating, also called habituation, prior to actually eating makes you less likely to stuff your mouth.
In this experiment, led by Dr. Carey Morewedge, participants were asked to imagine each step in the process of eating M&Ms. As a result, the participants who imagined eating 30 M&Ms ate much less of the real candy than those that imagined eating only 3. Morewedge additionally reported that it is necessary to picture the food you are actually going to eat in order for this to be effective. Participants asked to imagine eating M&Ms and then asked to eat cubes of cheese, ate the same amount of cheese no matter how many M&Ms they ate in their heads.
It’s too early to determine whether this “diet” is effective, but logically it makes sense. Perhaps this is a method in eliminating all your mindless eating. Think about all of those times you finished a large bag of chips in one sitting, when it was intended for the rest of the week. Or those meals where you ate 6 pizza slices just because they were there, when 3 had sufficiently filled you up. Diminishing Marginal Utility is the economic concept that for each additional consumption, the utility gained decreases. For example, the first cookie you consume is the most pleasurable, but that delectability decreases with each cookie. Therefore, habituation can allow you to stop eating when your marginal utility is still really high (instead of that substandard feeling of being “too full”).
Try it and let me know your results! The next time you’re about to open a bag of chips, first think about eating them. Go through the motions in your head of taking one chip at a time. Imagine the texture between your fingers, the taste on your tongue, the crunch in your teeth…Do this for a couple minutes, then start eating. How soon do you get full?
Sources:
http://www.drozfans.com/dr-ozs-advice/dr-oz-think-yourself-skinny-how-to-imagine-yourself-thin/
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/14/science/14tier.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/12/the-imagination-diet-article-habituation-thinking-about-food.html