Genes 2 Brains 2 Mind 2 Me

The holiday foods are here – everywhere – and, even if you are steeped in a diet or other austerities, your friends and in-laws may not be.  The sights, the smells, the pleasures of sharing exotic tastes with your loved ones … I mean, if you can’t indulge now … when?  What’s a mindful person to do?

A timely article appeared in this week’s issue of Science Magazine entitled,  Thought for Food: Imagined Consumption Reduces Actual Consumption [doi: 10.1126/science.1195701]  by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University & the title says it all.  Imagined consumption, where experimental volunteers were asked to imagine consuming an M&M candy – not just the visualization of the M&M itself, but the actual eating of it – either 3 or 30 times.  The researchers then let the volunteers dig into a bowl of real M&Ms and recorded how much they ate.  The article reports that volunteers who imagined eating an M&M 30 times, when offered a bowl of real M&Ms to snack on, actually ate fewer M&Ms (about 43% less) than volunteers who imagined consuming 3 M&Ms.

This finding, wherein “imagined consumption” either 30 or 3 times resulted in less “actual consumption”, held up when investigators manipulated the food in question (M&Ms or cheese blocks),  the order in which volunteers experienced different experimental trials, and across a control trial where volunteers were asked to imagine placing quarters into a laundry machine 3 or 30 times (resulted in no differences in actual M&M consumption).  Perhaps most striking was a comparison of “imagined moving” either 3 or 30 M&Ms into a bowl (folks who imagined moving 30 M&Ms actually ate MORE afterwards) in contrast to the trials where volunteers “imagined consuming” either 3 or 30 (the group that imagined consuming 30 M&Ms actually ate LESS).  This result verified the commonly-held notion that the sight of food whets the appetite and creates an incentive to consume.

Man, M&Ms are my favorite!  The veritable gateway drug of all holiday cakes, cookies, pies and candies.  Just reading about this research has me craving a handful of those holiday red and green M&Ms right now.

OK, I will use what yogic training I have to slow down my thought processes, to increase my self-awareness and to visualize – not just the treats themselves (lest I end up eating more) but the act of eating them, savoring them and feeling the pleasure of the experience.  I’ve learned – through yoga – that this pleasure, and all the wonderful pleasures in life, are really just inside me – all part of a deep-seated inner peace and joy.  I don’t need to seek pleasures ravenously in the outside world.  The wonderful pleasures of taste, smell, texture, appearance etc. lie within me, and are accessible through my imagination, breathing and meditation.

Enjoy your holidays!  And when you find yourself alongside the desert table, realize that YOU are an amazing being – delicious on the inside – much moreso than cookies and cake.