try this - decreases your craving

simonsuhVancouver

This is an example that we see commonly, especially if you are a late night TV watcher and see one of those 15 minute long infomercials. They usually have a 30 second clip where they show their product in color, and their competitor's non-working product in black and white and smaller or more disorientated, in a split screen. This makes their product more appealing and the competitor's product less appealing.

When you watch TV advertisements of food in HD color, it makes the food really appealing. But if you imagine watching the split screen side of it and see your favorite food in black and white, make it smaller, and move it farther away from you, you will want it less. This is the process of self-hypnosis. Try it out and share you comments please.

BigT555

sounds good in theory but it would be hard to put into practice. most tv's dont have an option to switch to black and white that is easily accessible, plus you would have to anticipate the commercial before it starts since most tend to start out right off the bat with a big blown up picture of their pizza or wings or whatever

simonsuhVancouver

that's about half the way how it works, (I'm kind of chuckling). What I meant was to 'pretend' to make the image of the food in your mind black and white and pretend it moving farther away. When you just pretend doing it, you'll notice your craving relating to that food slightly changing. If you revert back to thinking about it the original way you are more naturally (naturally- is a subjective word, where what happens naturally can usually be changed around over time) thinking about the food, then the cravings will come back. Just notice the feelings slightly changing when you do the food graying and moving further away exercise 10 times, nothing more.

ew_david

Too much work.

neveragain84

that's about half the way how it works, (I'm kind of chuckling). What I meant was to 'pretend' to make the image of the food in your mind black and white and pretend it moving farther away. When you just pretend doing it, you'll notice your craving relating to that food slightly changing. If you revert back to thinking about it the original way you are more naturally (naturally- is a subjective word, where what happens naturally can usually be changed around over time) thinking about the food, then the cravings will come back. Just notice the feelings slightly changing when you do the food graying and moving further away exercise 10 times, nothing more.

What about Oreos? And I'm being serious because Oreos are my kryptonite.

jackpotclown

Too much work.

+1 \m/

Chain_Ring

Too much work.

Read my mind

Some_Watery_Tart

I find that food decreases my cravings best.

ana3067

I just eat my cravings and fit it into my day.

Also I stopped snacking months ago and no longer get hungry every like.. hour. So I don't actually get random cravings all that often or cravings elicited by external stimuli.

ana3067

I find that food decreases my cravings best.

Derp_Diggler

OR, or, you could just change the channel. Or shut the TV off entirely. Or eat something, but not the whole fridge full.

Radical I know.

Unknown

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rml_16

I stopped eating meat and my food cravings disappeared. Maybe try that?

Seeing food on TV doesn't cause me cravings. Smelling it is another story.

simonsuhVancouver

Does anyone here have any experience with NLP, like taking workshop somewhere or something? - not the Tony Robbins variety. I'm just trying my best (and I know written media is probably not the best medium to introduce a instruction like this the most effectively) to explain some of the basic concepts of how NLP works that could help people out.

that's about half the way how it works, (I'm kind of chuckling). What I meant was to 'pretend' to make the image of the food in your mind black and white and pretend it moving farther away. When you just pretend doing it, you'll notice your craving relating to that food slightly changing. If you revert back to thinking about it the original way you are more naturally (naturally- is a subjective word, where what happens naturally can usually be changed around over time) thinking about the food, then the cravings will come back. Just notice the feelings slightly changing when you do the food graying and moving further away exercise 10 times, nothing more.

What about Oreos? And I'm being serious because Oreos are my kryptonite.

I get this is more of a joking question than a serious question, but I'll give a serious reply if this helps further the discussion in a beneficial way.

The way to do it with Oreos is to gray out the image in your mind of it so that it becomes more faded, like a newspaper printout image. Take away the vibrant colors - for example, when you see a french fry in real life, versus the one on a McDonald's TV commercial, the real one is not as vibrantly yellow or golden as what you see in a advert. Same way with Oreos, instead of seeing the vibrant colored white and black, make the colors a bit dull, like photoshop editor reduced the color hue intensity. Imagine seeing a Oreo picture in a newspaper page that's a couple of weeks old. That should change the subtle craving for it and that's all I want you to do, notice the effect of the change. It's a small mental tool.

simonsuhVancouver

I stopped eating meat and my food cravings disappeared. Maybe try that?

Seeing food on TV doesn't cause me cravings. Smelling it is another story.

Different senses effect different people with varying emotions, I used a visual exercise because it is the most common sensory input that humans on average use to organize a lot of data inside our mind. For different categories of thought, people may have learned to use different representational models in their mind naturally.

Mr_Bad_Example

This is an example that we see commonly, especially if you are a late night TV watcher and see one of those 15 minute long infomercials. They usually have a 30 second clip where they show their product in color, and their competitor's non-working product in black and white and smaller or more disorientated, in a split screen. This makes their product more appealing and the competitor's product less appealing.

When you watch TV advertisements of food in HD color, it makes the food really appealing. But if you imagine watching the split screen side of it and see your favorite food in black and white, make it smaller, and move it farther away from you, you will want it less. This is the process of self-hypnosis. Try it out and share you comments please.

Hypnosis is a state of heightened awareness and concentration. What you described is visualization. They are a bit different.

simonsuhVancouver

The 'Hypnosis is a state of heightened awareness', 'time where conscious faculties are bypassed' definitions are correct to an extent, different definitions of hypnosis are appropriate for different settings.

The visualization that I described is more related to Neuro-Linguistic Programming, which has overlaps in hypnosis, but different in some aspects as well.

What I'm dealing with is a changing in the emotion you have attached to food. If you watch a horror movie involving people always dying on ladders, you may develop a different emotional meaning to ladders after you watch the movie than before. Likewise if you watch a movie about Killer Whales being friends with people (I'm just thinking of the Free Willy movie series from the 90s), you will likely develop a new, and perhaps positive emotional meaning to Killer Whales (Opposite of how Jaws movie series made tons of people have fears about sharks when it came out - you can check statistics on scuba diving in 1975 and 1976). The meaning changing period only took the span of 2 hrs of the movie duration, yet people like me hold a emotional meaning to Killer Whales or other things in my life for decades after going through the experience. Advertisers can effectively do the same for you but for their product in under 2 minutes when they target the message of their ad right. I study this process of meaning making and focus on creating the de-advertising effects so people who don't want to be affected by these advertisements long after first watching them, can have a effective, time saving manner of going about emotionally achieving their target goals so they can choose how they want to feel about the food or other things they want to have a different feeling about but are having a bit of difficulty doing so.

pickgo

I think it's a really good idea actually and I'm going to try it next time I want something with my head when my stomach is actually okay and doesn't really need anything more.

I also have noticed myself feeling anxious sometimes about feeling hungry, as though it's doing me harm to be hungry. Which of course it's not - not when I've got almost half my body weight to lose. And mostly what's stopping me is in my head. So thank you, your idea might help!

Odwaroftorn

I will give this a try. Here's what has finally worked for me.

I've found if I eat a combination of 2 cups fibrous vegetable (broccoli, leaf lettuce, etc.) and 4-8 ounces of protein (chicken, beef, bison, fish, even tuna-fish, etc.) and spice (1 cup jalapenos, liberal dose of hot sauce of choice) I am not hungry for 5 - 6 hours. If I eat any other combination I'm hungry within the hour.

I actually can skip the spicy now and just have the fibre and protein, but it took a month or so to get there and why would anyone want to skip on jalapenos? But Beware!, if you get store bought jars of pickled jalapeno slices the sodium is through the roof. So I like eating them right from my garden.

mikkiish

Need motivation, I'm on everyday checking the app all day please add me!?

mikkiish

Too much work.

Read my mind

yes

simonsuhVancouver

I think it's a really good idea actually and I'm going to try it next time I want something with my head when my stomach is actually okay and doesn't really need anything more.

I also have noticed myself feeling anxious sometimes about feeling hungry, as though it's doing me harm to be hungry. Which of course it's not - not when I've got almost half my body weight to lose. And mostly what's stopping me is in my head. So thank you, your idea might help!

I would recommend picking just one food you eat once in a while that you could probably do without, and just do this exercise in 30 seconds with that one food a couple times in your mind. And an important step 2 is to notice the feelings during those 30 seconds because those minute feeling changes are to help your subconscious mind learn the minute changes in emotions. Then an hour later, come back and do the same thing again, and notice the feelings again. This time it will be easier to do. When you come back in a day and do it again for 30 seconds, you will notice that making the images of food in your mind grayer and farther away for that one particular food will suddenly seem somewhat easier compared to the first time. This will be caused by the fact that the brain works similar like our muscles in that when we think a particular thought, our brain builds 'muscle' via firing off electrical signals and connecting and strengthening the neuro-synapses in our brain so make processing that thought stronger and easier. When we have lots of positive and powerful neuro-synapse formations of thoughts and electrical signals aiding us in the positive direction, we can truly become powerful weight-loss achievers.

For the second part -

Think about anxiety. What do you think of? What kind of images do you need to make inside your mind to make you feel the emotions of feeling nervous? What kind self-beliefs relating to hunger in your personal life must you have (or that you could give me and I could try on in my mind to replicate the similar style of anxiety around hunger that you are feeling?) to represent that anxiety or fear? What is causing you to have that feeling around hunger? When you become aware of the inner mind representations of images, the sizes and qualities of those image representations inside your mind, and the self-beliefs relating to those ideas, then you can alter your mind to never feel those feelings again. This is because your subconscious mind is powerful enough to begin maneuvering your thoughts in the right direction as soon as it aware of all the specific tools it needs to gracefully navigate itself in the right direction.

simonsuhVancouver

Too much work.

Read my mind

yes

unfortunately, things require work in life. And that's the sad part of life, I agree. The next best thing to do about it is to carefully direct the focus to the fun part of it so that it doesn't feel like work anymore. Because, sometimes, thinking about images in new ways, of images that we already have anyways, to more intelligently guide our emotions can be a fascinating thing, that can have multiplying dividends down the road just from a few simple tricks. NLP is something you already do, and becoming aware of how the images you make in your mind affect you, and how to have happier emotions from that, could be a fun, enjoyable way to pass time, and maybe you'll reach your goals along the way as well.

hhanse45

When I started watching Netflix instead of regular TV programming, my cravings went down substantially. No more food commercials!

I love your idea, though. I have been able to change a lot of powerful associations in my mind just by using my imagination.

simonsuhVancouver

When I started watching Netflix instead of regular TV programming, my cravings went down substantially. No more food commercials!

I love your idea, though. I have been able to change a lot of powerful associations in my mind just by using my imagination.

You are right on. If you decrease the number of times where you are playing movies inside your mind inadvertently by watching food commercials, you naturally begin to emotionally move away from food and have a much more relaxing time sticking to your diet.

The exercise that I was describing in the first post is just a next step thing where even without watching a 'commercial' for de-advertising yourself from food, you can still create the same emotional affect by making the images gray and small (and also flat and foggy and less realistic - there are a couple ways to do this depending on the food image constantly being played inside the individual), and farther away, and as a result, attach a more bland emotion to food to make staying on track with your diet foods much easier. You can practice doing this when you go by the food aisle section in the super markets. And after you've done it a couple times, you may being to do it unconsciously without even thinking about it and you'll be wondering where your food craving disappeared to!