Mind Your Diet: The Psychology Behind Sticking to Any Diet

By Melinda Blackman

So many diet plans give tremendous details about the physiological processes that make their particular diet successful, but fail to include the psychological elements that are also necessary for adherence to the diet plan. Hence, the goal of this book is to provide you with the life-long mental tool to adhere to your diet plan.

During the course of this book, I will point out several marketing techniques that thwart our efforts toward having a balanced daily diet. Then, I will show you how to apply psychological techniques the right way to help you stick to your diet plans and live a healthy lifestyle. This book will help you learn to control the many situations and thoughts, related to eating, that our parents helped to control when we were children.

Long after you have read this book, your self-created wristband with the acronym DIET (Do I Eat This?) will help remind you of the psychological eating strategies presented in this book.

Wristbands with the acronym, D. I. E. T. "Do I Eat This?" inscribed on them can be purchased for $6.00 each. All proceeds will go to the AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION. Please send cash or a check payable to Dr. Melinda Blackman, Department of Psychology, California State University, Fullerton, CA 92834. Please include the number of wristbands that you would like to purchase and a shipping address.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 14, 2008
• ISBN: 9781462842575

Book preview

Copyright © 2008 by Melinda Blackman, Ph.D.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including

photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval

system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

45820

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

You and Your Environment

Chapter 2

Going Public With It

Chapter 3

The Mental Gastric Bypass Procedure

Chapter 4

Food Fantasies

Chapter 5

No is the Operant Word

Chapter 6

Call in the Reinforcements!

Chapter 7

The Mood-Food Connection

Chapter 8

Mind Games

Chapter 9

Portion Distortion

Chapter 10

Planning Ahead for Headaches, Havoc and Dining Out

Chapter 11

Stocking Your Kitchen For You and Non-Dieters

Chapter 12

Exercising Control

Chapter 13

Several Glasses a Day Will Keep the Fat Away

Chapter 14

Sleep on It!

Chapter 15

My Mentor

Chapter 16

DIET (Do I Eat This?)

Appendix

Choosing the Diet that is Right for You

Bibliography

To my family and extended family members:

Thank you for your inspiration and support!

MCB

Introduction

I am delighted that you chose this book as a companion to the diet that you are currently using. Regardless of the diet that you are on, you will find that these research-based psychological principles will help you to stick to any diet. When we were children, our parents controlled our eating environments by purchasing our foods, preparing them and even barring access from unhealthy foods. Our parents, to some extent, also controlled our thoughts about food and eating behavior (e.g. Eat your vegetables and they will make you grow tall.). Now that we are older, our eating environments and thoughts are not being formed and controlled by our guardians; we are on our own (at least we think so) when it comes to deciding when, what and how much to eat. We may not realize it, but our eating preferences and behavior are being manipulated to a large extent by marketing gurus and the mass media. How else can you explain that Ronald McDonald is the second most recognizable icon next to Santa Claus for today’s children? One could say that marketing psychology and the mass media have contributed greatly to the dramatic 75% rise in obesity in U.S. adults since 1991. So to get back on track with healthy eating behavior, we need to fight fire with fire, or psychology with psychology. During the course of this book, I will point out several marketing techniques that thwart our efforts toward having a balanced daily diet. Then, I will show you how to apply psychological techniques the right way to help you stick to your diet plans and live a healthy lifestyle. This book will help you learn to control the many situations and thoughts, related to eating, that our parents helped to control when we were children.

So many diet plans give tremendous details about the physiological processes that make their particular diet successful, but fail to include the psychological elements that are also necessary for adherence to the diet plan. Hence, the goal of this book is to provide you with the life-long mental tools to adhere to your diet plan.

Long after you have read this book, your self-created wristband with the acronym DIET-(Do I Eat This?) will help remind you of the psychological eating strategies presented in this book.

It is important to realize, that it took many years for you to develop these habits of emotional and situationally influenced eating so it will take time and practice to unlearn these eating patterns. I know that you will enjoy this enlightening journey of learning how to control your environment and thoughts so your diet will produce the success you want. Congratulations for picking up your first of many tools!

All the Best,

Melinda

Chapter 1

You and Your Environment

How is it possible that Ronald McDonald is the second most recognizable icon, next to Santa Claus, for this generation’s children? I am going to take a stab in the dark and guess that some extremely clever people on Madison Avenue have used a bit of marketing psychology on us so that we have become brand loyal. This, of course, is not the only explanation for how nearly 4 million children, ages 6-11, and 5.3 million adolescents, ages 12-19, were overweight or obese in 2002, according to the American Heart Association. Or since 1991, the prevalence of obesity among American adults has increased 75 percent. But psychology is playing a larger role in our eating behaviors than ever before. I believe it just may take psychology to undo the brand loyalties (e.g. to fast food chains, snack products) that marketing psychology has developed within us and to ultimately change our eating preferences and behavior. Let’s take a look at our own eating behavior for a moment.

Do you ever wonder how you could have eaten half of the slice and bake cookie dough before even baking the cookies? Or, perhaps you find yourself on a first name basis with the grocery clerks, as you visit the grocery store on a daily basis to replenish your disappearing food reserves at home. Do you keep a stash of chocolate bars hidden under the kitchen counter for those stressful emergencies? If these scenarios seem familiar to you, take a moment and place your two hands in front of your face. If you think about it, these two amazingly adept instruments are the sole way that any type of food or beverage enters your mouth. Though we like to think that we have control over our hand movements, we often lose control and put unhealthy or unwanted food into our systems. We need not blame our hands for our eating habits, but the source that controls them, Our Brain. The following chapters will explain how the thoughts in our brains and characteristics in our environments can cause us to put food into our mouths that we might later regret. Also, during the course of this book I will introduce you to psychological principles, research studies, and antidotes so to provide you with the tools to adhere to the diet of your choice.

A Word About Psychology

When most people hear the word "psychology" they tend to think of a therapist analyzing a patient’s thoughts. This area of psychology, known as clinical psychology, is only one aspect of what psychologists study. Many psychologists are actually research scientists and use as their subjects, human beings, instead of rats, to test their theories of human nature. The formal definition of psychology from the Concise Oxford Dictionary is the scientific study of the human mind and its functions, especially those affecting behavior in a given context.

Research psychologists study an extremely diverse range of issues such as how humans learn, remember and process new information. There are psychologists who research the personality characteristics of those individuals with high and low self-esteem. Psychologists even study the role that genetics play in personality formation from infancy to old age. And of particular importance to this book, there are the psychologists who focus their research on eating behavior. We can divide these psychologists into two diametrically opposing main categories: those (consumer) psychologists who research the ideal location in a supermarket to place the candy and soda aisle so that you will be more inclined to buy their products and those psychologists that focus their research on why people engage in unhealthy eating patterns. As you can see, psychologists study and research the entire gamut of human behavior, both normal and abnormal. Just as medical researchers do, research psychologists use the scientific method to test their hypotheses, frequently with an independent and dependent variable and then publish their findings and theories in professional journals. The strategies that I will present to you, with regard to changing your thoughts about food, are based upon published psychological research and theories that have stood the test of time and the scrutiny of eminent psychological researchers.

Situation + Thoughts = Eating Behavior

You may be thinking, That is fine and well, but what causes me to eat foods that I should not even touch? Well, here is the synopsis: Back in the late 1960’s, there was a prominent debate between research psychologists concerning what causes a person’s behavior. Some researchers firmly believed that human behavior is solely based upon our personality related thoughts, while other researchers upheld that the situation that a person finds him or herself in causes their behavior. The researchers argued for about 20 years on this subject, which was later titled The Person-Situation Debate, and based on the results of several studies, they came to one conclusion. A person’s behavior in a particular situation is