Ep 53 - Simple Brain Hack to Eat Less Effortlessly

February 13,2025

Do you feel like you just want to eat more, more, more?

Today I’m sharing a quick and easy science-based technique to feel more satisfied with less.

I cover:

• the research study done with m&m’s and visualization

• how to apply this psychology to help you stop overeating and decrease excess desire for food

TRANSCRIPT:

 Before we dive in today, we have a upcoming free workshop on this February 20th at 11 a. m. mountain time on the six essential steps to stop binge eating. This is one of my signature workshops where I'm going to take you through the exact six steps that I took in order to get to where I am as a normal natural eater and how you can implement it with actionable steps that you can use that day.

So you're going to learn why typical eating advice hasn't worked in the past and the step by step pathway to food freedom  you're gonna receive a downloadable PDF to implement your new learnings And you're gonna want to come live to this one because we're gonna have a Q& A portion and a custom journal giveaway.

I have a brand new Journal that I've created with prompts that are going to help you to become the confident eater of your dreams. So make sure you come live to get entered in that giveaway and register in the show notes.

Hey, confident eaters. This episode is going to be so fun and interactive, and I have made a little cheat sheet for you. So make sure you go to the show notes to grab this cheat sheet so you can learn this little simple hack I'm going to teach you that is so effective in managing your cravings, your urges, and really to help you feel satisfied with less food.

So today I'm going to share this really fascinating study with you.

So let's just dive right in. This technique is something that can be used around any food, but I find it particularly helpful for ones that you tend to want to go back for more of. So I was recently coaching someone today who was struggling with the chocolate covered almonds at work, and she just kept wanting more and more and more and more.

Or if you keep going back for the cookies and you keep wanting more and more and more out of the cookie jar, this will help you start to feel satisfied because you know that if you eat the 10 cookies that your lower brain wants you to eat, you're not gonna feel good.

Our lower brain, as a reminder, is this habitual part of us that just runs our habits.

It's not what we really want. Like we know we don't want to eat 10 cookies in a row. But sometimes it feels like we do, because we've gotten this habit of overeating of binge-eating. And so we get this desire to do so.

So,  this technique, this exercise will be really good to help you reduce that desire to a more appropriate amount.

So you only want one cookie or a handful of almonds, and you can sit down and eat it in amounts that feel good to you.

So first research has found that repeated exposure to our particular food decreases our desire to consume more. This process is called habituation.

 Habituation is this concept where people become less responsive to anything they're exposed to repeatedly. So for example, the 10th bite of a pancake is going to be much less desirable than the first bite. Or when you walk outside and it's really bright out, it feels blinding at first, but then your eyes adapt to it.

It gets used to the stimulus and it reduces the way you respond to it. Okay. So this is something that I teach in depth. That occurs in my trigger food process in my confident eater program, I utilize food habituation to help you stop feeling so obsessed with these foods.

But what the study we're going to talk about today goes over is these scientists, they were curious to see if they could use the power of food habituation by just imagining eating the food over and over and over again, without actually eating it without actually consuming the food.

So they did this study in the UK where they brought in a whole bunch of people to eat m and M's.

Now one's group was told to just eat as many M and M's as they wanted. Just how about it? Here's a giant bowl. Go ahead and eat. Then the other group did a visualization beforehand that went a little, something like that.

They visualize that bowl of chocolate of M and M's. They visualize themselves reaching into that bowl, taking it on them, putting in their mouth and eating it over and over again.

So imagining getting another MNM, putting it in your mouth, eating it until they had imagine eating 30 MnMs over and over again.

Now here's, what's interesting. Those who imagined eating 30 M and Ms. eat 50% less on average than those who did it. So what this shows us is that our brain is really powerful and something I teach often ease of visualization as a strategy can be applied in so many different ways.

CEOs, athletes, executives use this technique all the time for different areas. But what's going on here is our unconscious brain. Often does not know the difference between an experience as actually happened. And one that we've imagined in depth. Isn't that fascinating?

That's why we'll be in the car, having a conversation in our head with our spouse and we'll be all angry at them and we'll be going back and forth and it feels like we've actually lived that experience.

We'll start feeling anxious, we'll start feeling angry, and then we get home and you talk to your spouse, you lash out at them and they're like, whoa, like what even happened? We didn't even have this conversation, but you just had it all in your head. And your brain perceived that as a real memory, a real experience.

And so because of this, by imagining eating these MnMs over and over again. Those people's brain and bodies felt like they actually had eaten 30 m&ms. So by the time they went to go eat more, they didn't want so much because they knew that that wouldn't feel good to have even more. Even though it was just an imagined experience.

How fascinating is that? Like, our brain is truly so powerful, which is why we need to take a brain based approach to stopping binge eating.

 This is why just telling people the advice of eat less, move more does not work. It is not as simple as calories in calories out. I mean, like at the surface level, it is that simple, but there are so many things we can do in our mind to help you get through this learning of how to stop overeating.

So this study was also repeated with little cubes of cheese and these same results were repeated where the people who imagined eating the cheese over and over and over again. Actually ended up eating less cheese than the people who didn't.

So, what I want you to do now is to do this with me.

Let's get our hands dirty and play with this. Okay. Because listening along to the podcast, as amazing as I am. This is not create actionable change. So we need to actually implement this.

Now I'll mention that if you have been loving the podcast and are having that trouble, actually doing these things, come join me and my confident eater program.

This is where you will get expert psychology-based coaching to instantly change that.

So, if you're out on a walk right now, you can still do this exercise by closing your eyes. Or if you're driving, you can still do this exercise with your eyes open, or if you want to save it to later, you can always do it at home, but I'd recommend you still listen to this part and then get to it again later.

If you want to repeat it.

 So when we do this, you have to be careful though. You don't just want to think about the taste and the smell, the food and what the food looks like and how it's going to feel in your mouth. Because we have this kind of priming around this food that will increase the desire for it.

So if you just tell yourself how good it's going to taste when you put that chocolate and it melts in your mouth, like you're going to want the chocolate. So what we want to think about instead is the actual chewing, the biting, the food disappearing and the swallowing of the food repeatedly in order for this effect to work.

So take a moment.

Imagine a food you recently binged on or a food that's been around in your house, but around at work that you've had more desire for, then you want to have desire for.

And I now want you to take a minute. If you can, to close your eyes. And imagine taking that first bite of food. Imagine where you are. Where you might be when you're eating this. And imagining chewing that food swallowing it, letting it go down in your body.

Then picking up that food again. Chewing it swallowing it, letting it go down into your body. And again, picking up the food, chewing swallowing, letting it go down in your body. And continuing on. Taking another bite, chewing, swallowing, letting it go down in your body.

And I want you to really imagine what this food will look like as it starts to go away. And the imagining this food getting smaller and smaller.

And then as this food starts to go away. You might even imagine getting a second one. So maybe you get a second serving of chips or second cookie. And again, imagining taking a bite. Chewing swallowing letting it go down. Taking another bite, chewing, swallowing, letting it go down. Noticing as the food gets smaller, as you're taking these bites. Chewing  swallowing letting it go down.

Continue eating it chewing, swallowing it, letting it go down. And as you continue through this, noticing how it feels in your body. As you're continuing to get more and more of this food. What do you notice as it settles into your stomach? How does it feel? Are you starting to feel sick? Disgusted. Overly full. A sugar rush. He attention to that sensation.

And then I want you to imagine you can open your eyes now. Eating that food again. Right. So imagine picking up that cookie. And seeing how much you might want a bit. Picking up the chocolate. It seemed you actually want a whole bunch or do you just want one bite? Do you just want one square? What happens a lot of the times with this, with all my clients and me included is you want so much less, again, decreases your desire for it.

You might not even want it at all, but if you do still want it, I can guarantee you definitely don't want as much of it as when you have the urge to eat it. As when you were lower brain was telling you how much you eat, you got into your higher brain. And you're like, I could actually be satisfied with just a few bites with this with just a half of a cookie. With just a small portion of chips, a couple bites of chips.

So I'd recommend saving this episode, going back through doing this exercise anytime you have a craving and urge to binge this desire to eat a ton of food. When you know you don't want eat a ton of food and the more you practice this, the easier it will get, it will work with any food. If you want to share your experience, I'd love to hear it.  Feel free to send me a message over at the confident eater.