Have you ever stopped eating something long enough that when you went back to it, the flavor seemed more powerful? Many people report this after having been on a diet. You can use this premise to your advantage and make dieting a much more useful tool.
Diets Are Unsustainable
Most people now recognize typical diets as unsustainable. Many just aren’t willing to give up a part of their eating habits, like dessert or alcohol, forever. But there is a way that a diet can be useful, if you change your mindset about the goal.
Researchers are investigating the idea that our sense of flavor, and our overall experience with food, can be altered. So far, the results seem to show that this is a real phenomenon.1 A new interdisciplinary science called neurogastronomy goes even further. The way foods look, smell, feel, and sound all play into the overall experience of its flavor. Even the context in which a food is eaten matters.
Change The Goal Of Your Diet
The idea that our perception of flavor is not static, but alterable supports the idea that you can change how a food tastes to you and how much reward you feel from consuming it. In light of this, a diet could be a useful tool if you change your idea about the goal. Rather than going on a diet to lose weight, which summons up feelings of long term deprivation and unsustainable lifestyle change, use a diet to change a behavior. People who eat a lot of sweets, for example, often find things too sweet after giving them up for a few weeks. This can help them feel satisfied with smaller and less decadent desserts. Those who normally eat a lot of processed foods will report a “chemically” taste if they have spent a few weeks eating only whole foods. That makes packaged food far less appealing. Some find they feel better with less alcohol after a round of abstention, so they drink less.
The key to this approach is to view whatever change you’d like to make as a temporary measure. Nobody wants to give up their favorite food forever, but most people can do it for a little while if they know there is an end. Try dropping something from your diet for four to six weeks only. This break could reset your experience with the food and get you to a place where you eat it less and enjoy it more.