Thinking repeatedly about eating a specific food can actually cause you to eat less of it, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have discovered.
For the purpose of the study, 51 volunteers were divided into two groups and asked to visualize themselves eating M&M’s brand candy. The first group was asked to do the visualization exercise 30 times, while the second group only did it three times.
When the groups were presented with the candy to eat, those who had done the visualization 30 times consumed only 2.2 g of candy, while the others ate 4.2 g.
In a second experiment, 42 participants were asked to visualize consuming either M&M’s or cheese cubes. Within these two groups, half were asked to do the exercise 30 times, and the other half only three times.
All participants were then given cheese cubes for tasting. Those who had visualized eating cheese cubes 30 times ate only 6.3 g of cheese, significantly less than the others. Those who had visualized eating M&M’s 30 times, however, ate considerably more cheese than those who had only envisioned eating the candy three times.
The study concludes that repeated visualization of a food can help reduce appetite, but only towards that particular food.