Satiate Your Imagination

Today's NYT had a piece on how imagining eating something wonderful makes you eat less. It separates liking a food from wanting to eat the food. Imagining eating it doesn't make you like it less; instead, you want to eat less. That is, if you truly in detail visualize eating it first. Not just contemplate the food, but each bite of a healthy portion is thought through, imagined bite by bite.

I'm a real believer in the power of visualization. Certainly, years ago when I was training for my pilot's license, I found sitting alone and thinking through each manuever and procedure repeatedly made me more able to execute them.

So I definitely have a problem with eating sweets in the evening. I'm adding maybe up to 300 calories almost every night in chocolate, (ok, some nights it's even more!) after dinner as I wind down. I've been struggling with what to do about it. We're talking Dove Darks, the absolute best chocolate ever sold in a supermarket.

An obvious choice would be to just don't have it around. This is my chocolate, its not like I have to have it around for the family. But I'm not ready for that. The thought of no chocolate in the house sends me into a panic. That might be reason enough to make myself go without for a while. But not right now.

I'm thinking about putting my stash somewhere inconvenient. I've been keeping it in the kitchen, and only allowing myself one piece at a time- each one is off the couch and a new trip to the kitchen. But my house is small enough that is no real barrier.

So now I'm thinking about keeping it in the basement, a sufficiently unpleasant place that it will be a more significant obstacle, besides just more steps and further away.

But I'm also thinking about this visualization technique. I heard more about it on a Science Friday podcast. The key is to not just be stimulated by seeing or thinking of the food, but actually to "habituate" to the food the way phobia sufferers habituate to their stimulus. And artificial stimulus can be as effective as the real thing.

Can't hurt, right? All I invest is some time and thought. I'll let you know.


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