Following on from my last blog about imagining the consumption of your favourite foods to help reduce consumption, I stumbled across this article from science daily which painted a rather conflicting picture.
The report outlined that mental imagery e.g. imagining your favourite food takes up cognitive resources (brain power) resulting in people finding it harder to focus on other tasks. One study showed that volunteers that were craving chocolate recalled fewer words and took longer to solve maths problems than those that were not craving chocolate!
They also found that you could use this knowledge in your favour by mentally imagining other images, such as picturing a rainbow, to decrease your food cravings. This break in thinking patterns helped to reduce the clear image people had of the food and decreased their cravings for that particular food.
So as you can see, the world of science can be extremely conflicting. My words of wisdom on all of this; see which method works best for you.
We are all very different people. If you find that visualising the consumption of a certain food helps to reduce your actual consumption, stick with it; although if you are the opposite, why not try breaking the mental imagery cycle and think about something non food related, or better yet, go back to focusing on your actual work so that you can be productive by the end of the day?
Related posts:
100 People in 100 Days
