Fantasizing your cravings away?

My own issue with overeating rests on one fact: food is delicious. Okay, not all, but many.

So when I read this silly headline about dreaming away your cravings, I obviously snickered. Really? In the universe of the fat person, really?

Well, okay, let’s see what this study had to say.

In the experiment at Carnegie Mellon University, participants were divided into three groups. The first group imagined inserting 33 quarters into a laundry machine, performing 33 repetitive actions. The second group imagined inserting 30 quarters into a laundry machine and then imagined eating three M&M’S. The third group imagined inserting three quarters into a laundry machine and then imagined eating 30 M&M’S.

Then, all three groups ate freely from a bowl filled with M&M’S after they were told they would take a taste test. The third group that imagined eating 30 M&M’S ate significantly fewer candy than the other two groups. The researchers conducted five different variations of this experiment using cheese and M&M’S.

Researchers believe the decreased desire to eat food could be from habituation – a decreased response to stimulus because of repeated exposure. For example, a tenth bite of chocolate is less delicious than the very first bite, because your taste buds have gotten used to or habituated to its taste.

“We demonstrated that habituation to a food item can occur even when its consumption is merely imagined,” wrote the authors.

Hey, there’s no mention about the weight or weight histories of these test groups.

I think it’s fair to say that someone like me doesn’t get habituated very easily. As it is, when I eat things I find endlessly delicious, I eat them as slowly as humanly possible so that I can keep tasting them as long as possible. That’s my best alternative to eating more of something. I want the flavor FOREVER.

mmmmmm pizza in my mouth FOREVER

Seriously, if you could ask my husband about me and drunken binges on super-spicy peanuts, he’d attest to this. I will turn my entire face numb if left unchecked. I don’t stop because of the pain, I stop because I’m either full, run out, or start feeling like a glutton. And these are things that have a cumulative flavor effect, not just a repetitious one. My face may be on fire but I want more of them in my mouth, dammit.

I have no issue eating a jar of pickles in one sitting, then looking for more. And let’s not talk about the bell pepper binge I’ve been on for the last few weeks. (Super bonus that I don’t need to regulate those… wooo hooo for delicious healthy stuff.)

Still, I might just be a freak exception.

For the rest of the world — is this approach worth trying?

These findings that the imagination could play a powerful role in affecting appetite, could have bigger implications for the battle against the bulge.

“We hope this kind of research gives us insight into behavioral intervention to regulate food intake,” Morewedge said. “We know that feeling of fullness doesn’t come immediately when eating. It comes later on. Habituation occurs more quickly.”

With better research on habituation, it could help people regulate food intake.

Morewedge said they’re testing different ways that “imagination induction” could help people eat more healthy food and find unhealthy foods like potato chips less appealing.

Well, that last statement borders on hypnosis, which is kind of weird.

Cheesy concept gets cheesy illustration.

But the bigger picture is about altering behavior. Ultimately, when you’re going for a lifestyle change, you have mental hurdles to clear. Some of them are about 80 billion feet high. Should this work for a person and they can find a way to implement it in their regular routine, I can imagine this could be earth-shattering in terms of progress.

Perhaps, with the holidays looming and stacks of cookies everywhere, this would be the perfect time to give this a fair shot, no? This isn’t like trying some godawful pill with 80 side effects or getting sliced open. Even I, mistress of the taste buds that never stop, think that maybe some playing around with my imagination may be in order.

Just don’t be the weirdo at the family gathering sitting in your chair with your eyes closed with your mouth drooling and making moans of ecstasy, okay?