Let’s be honest -- counting calories is not the most joyous
way to eat, and neither is weighing every morsel or following a
watermelon or cabbage soup diet. So what’s a plump person to do to
slim down and still really enjoy one of life’s greatest
pleasures?
Well, you could try thinking yourself thinner. Okay, it’s not
quite so simple -- but one new study found that it’s surprisingly
close to that easy! The "imaginary diet" is one of several
intriguing new mind-body approaches to weight loss. Which of these
might work for you? The honest answer is, who knows, since
different techniques work for different people. You’d have to give
them a try to find out. Some possibilities that caught our eye here
at Daily Health News...
GO ON AN "IMAGINARY" DIET
Imagine yourself eating, one at a
time, 30 pieces of cheese... now look at some
real cheese. Hungry for it? Researchers at Carnegie Mellon
University say it’s unlikely. People who repeatedly imagine
consuming a food, one piece or serving at a time again and again,
subsequently eat less of that food because they "habituate" to it
-- which means that their appetite for the food diminishes,
explains Carey K. Morewedge, PhD, the Carnegie Mellon psychologist
who led the study.
Familiarity kills cravings: Dr. Morewedge and
his colleagues had study participants imagine eating two different
foods -- M&Ms and cheese cubes -- either three or 30 times
while viewing a slide show featuring images of the foods with each
picture onscreen for three to five seconds. Afterward, people who
had imagined eating a food 30 times ate less of it than those who
had imagined consuming it just three times.
Next steps: Dr. Morewedge hopes that this
technique can be adapted into a strategy that any of us could use
to gain better control of our eating. For instance, say you’re
going to a barbecue -- shortly before you go, spend some time
vividly imagining yourself biting into, chewing and swallowing 30
chicken wings, 30 ribs, 30 hot dogs or 30 hamburgers... and see
whether you then eat less at the barbecue than you normally would
have.
CHEW... PAY ATTENTION... CHEW... PAY ATTENTION
The practice called "mindful eating" is not a diet -- it’s
simply the act of paying close attention to your body, says Jan
Chozen Bays, MD, author of the book
Mindful
Eating: A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful
Relationship with Food. This involves focusing intently
on the color, aroma, texture, flavor and temperature of every
bite of everything you eat. As you do this, you also pay
attention to how your body feels as you eat or drink something.
When are you half full? Three-quarters full? And when you reach
three-quarters full or a little more, are you really
still
hungry -- or just eating to eat?
Avoid unconscious eating. Mindful eating isn’t
hard to do, but it does require you to stop doing other things
while you eat. So instead of mindlessly munching while you check
your e-mail or watch TV, bring your full awareness to what is going
on inside and outside your body. The truth is, if you don’t pay
attention to what you’re eating, it’s almost as if you didn’t eat
it. Suddenly your plate is empty -- but you don’t feel satisfied.
The reason is that you ate without thinking.
Your mindful eating homework. To get started,
try taking the first four sips of your tea with full attention...
eat one meal a week mindfully, alone and in silence... or, if you
enjoy, say, reading during meals, alternate these activities. Read
a page, put the book down, take a bite of food and savor it, then
read another page. This will get you started toward more frequent
mindful eating.
EAT LESS AUTOMATICALLY WITH YOGA
Dr. Chozen Bays also told me about research suggesting that
people who practice yoga eat less. According to a 2009 study at
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, middle-aged
people who regularly do yoga gain fewer unwanted pounds than those
who do not, independent of individual dietary habits and other
physical activity.
Why yoga makes you eat less: Doing yoga is a
natural way to bring greater awareness of your body, Dr. Chozen
Bays explains. As you learn how to maintain calm and to be
nonjudgmentally observant during challenging yoga poses, it teaches
you to "be more present," and it also happens that you begin to eat
only when you are hungry and stop eating when you are not hungry.
This is a form of "body wisdom" that very young children naturally
possess -- they eat just to fullness and stop. But many of us were
taught to clean our plates and as we’ve grown older, we’ve kept
that habit. Yoga can help you reclaim your innate wisdom and tune
into your body’s natural signals about when and how much to eat. So
try a class or two and see what you think.
TRICK YOUR MIND INTO EATING LESS
Have you heard of the infamous KFC Double Down sandwich? It’s
a gluttonous offering that features two slices of bacon, two slices
of cheese and a sauce that contains chicken fat all placed in
between two large deep-fried pieces of chicken. (You can have the
chicken grilled instead of fried, which reduces the fat content to
"only" 23 grams.) From Whoppers to supersized sodas to humongous
cookies, portion sizes have grown by leaps and bounds in recent
years... and so have American waistlines.
Bigger is not always better. In a series of
experiments at Cornell University, scientists have verified that
being given bigger portions leads people to eat more. In one test,
investigators served moviegoers popcorn in containers of different
sizes -- large buckets or medium-sized ones. All of the popcorn was
stale, but even so, those given the larger portions ate 34% more.
In another trial, people who ate tomato soup from "bottomless soup
bowls" (which kept refilling from hidden tubes) consumed 73% more
soup than those who ate from normal bowls -- and rated themselves
no fuller than those who ate from normal bowls.
A little bit is better: Smaller plates make
portions look larger, Dr. Morewedge notes -- and you can make some
very easy changes to take advantage of this fact. For example, at
home, eat from salad plates and drink from smaller-sized juice
glasses. If you are having a snack, put out a single portion rather
than eat from the full bag. If you buy economy-sized packages of
foods, repackage them into single portions in small bags or
containers. At restaurants, order one entrée and split it with a
dining companion, asking the waiter to have it served to you on a
smaller-than-normal plate. With today’s giant portions at most
restaurants, you won’t go hungry.
The next time you’re feeling ravenous, picture a tower of 30
hotdogs, take a good look, a deep breath -- and say to yourself,
"I’m in charge here!"