The Imaginary Food Diet

The Next Diet Fad: Imagine Yourself Pigging Out

Like the author of the article, I don’t trust the researchers' use of pictures of M&M’s and Kraft cheese cubes as the test pictures.

This would be a real test: I think I will propose an LTH event. We all gather, stare at Ronnie’s pictures of food from _____(Khan, TAC Quick, Smoque, pick your favorite) and then we see who actually goes to eat at any of these places after staring at the pictures. Now that would be a true test of this diet theory….

Hellodali wrote:The Next Diet Fad: Imagine Yourself Pigging Out

Like the author of the article, I don’t trust the researchers' use of pictures of M&M’s and Kraft cheese cubes as the test pictures.

Thanks for posting this. Something like it is actually what I first thought when I saw the thread What do you eat with first? (in terms of imagining food, using senses other than taste to perceive food first). I meant to post the article because I have a data point to add. So, last month, I meditated for 10 days, roughly 12 hours a day, with eyes closed, on an extremely restricted diet. My thoughts over the 10 days strayed like this:

Day 1: Large deep dish spinach pizza from Lou Malnati's
Day 2: Rare Workingman Burger from Revolution
Day 3: Whole red velvet cake made by me or picked up from Fox & Obel
Day 4: 55-day aged ribeye from David Burke's
Day 5: Box of Cookie Crisp Cereal (don't ask)
Day 6: Hungarian pancake from Smak Tak & 55-day aged ribeye from David Burke's (this was a really hard day of meditation)
Day 7: Serving dish-sized bowl of homemade carbonara
Day 8: Whopper from Burger King (delirious at this point)
Day 9: Two Old Fashioned apple fritters
Day 10: Special pork ramen from Santouka

I had some time (and hunger on my hands), so I spent a decent part of each day fantasizing about eating these things. In my mind, I broke it down in detail, eating each item from first bite to last bite. Up until day 11, I was certain that I would find all of these items and consume them ravenously once I got back to town. It's been over 20 days since my meditation started, a week and a half since it ended, and I actually haven't had any of the items that I imagined (OK, maybe just some pork from Santouka). This year, much more than past years of meditation and fasting, I've had difficulty returning to normal (for me) eating, and while my weight has rebounded slightly, I'm still down 7lbs since last month. I think I would have been more skeptical, but based on my recent experience, I think the researchers may be on to something.

I definitely think there's something to this. I've noticed that I get full sooner at LTH events than I normally would on any other day, which is disappointing because LTH events always have a plethora of delicious things to shove in my face.

One of key differences I can think of between, say, an LTH holiday party and any weeknight dinner at home is that, at LTH events, I'm really tasting things, thinking about what I'm eating, and discussing the food in vivid detail with others, whereas at home I'm shoveling food down my throat while paying bills and watching TV as the baby monitor emits a duet of angry screaming.

Four hours after an LTH event, I'm still satisfyingly full, and couldn't even think about eating. Four hours after scarfing down dinner in seven minutes flat, I'm standing in a dark kitchen, eating fistfuls of Utz pub mix out of the giant plastic Costco jar.

I looked into this as well - the principle involved is "habituation," where you stop responding to a stimulus after the stimulus is repeated. The study is really interesting - they required people to imagine the entire act of eating from putting the food in their mouth to chewing and swallowing, and they contrasted this with people who just imagined the food itself, or imagined picking up the food or moving it around. They also noted it took quite a bit of imagining - 30 m&ms, individually imagined, to have an effect.

There have been a number of studies of human neurological response to food - another interesting study shows the opposite of this effect. A group of subjects with memory loss were served a large lunch, after which the tables were completely cleared. A few minutes later (after the memory loss kicked in) they were served the same lunch. They ate just as heartily as the first time, and did it once more when the process was repeated later. At no time did the subjects notice that they were full.

Another interesting study showed that obese children take longer to habituate to food stimuli than children of normal weight...unless the stimulus is french fries (I found that fact to be more interesting than the weight issue.)