The Best Diet Is the One You Don’t Know You’re On

 

Brian Wansink studies human eating behavior in “food psychology labs” in order to see the many variables that influence the choices we make, knowingly or more often mindlessly, when we eat. In his book Mindless Eating he writes that we make over 200 eating decisions every day and that most of us are not aware of these decisions. A lot of these choices are determined by “hidden persuaders,” little cues that can make the difference between a few hundred calories a day and that small difference can over the long-term result in several pounds of unwanted bodyweight.

In his quest to make us more mindful of the eating choices we make, he makes it clear that he wants to discourage us from going on any kind of crash diet. Laying out the purpose of his book, he writes: “This book is not about dietary extremism—just the opposite. It’s about reengineering your environment so that you can eat what you want without guilt and without gaining weight. It’s about reengineering your food life so that it is enjoyable and mindful.”

Mindless Eating differs from diet books in two important ways. One, there must be no drastic reduction of calories in order in order to prevent our metabolisms from resisting and going into outright shut-down mode. But even more importantly, his book does not emphasize physiology and nutrition as much as it focuses on psychology and marketing. And the best psychological state to be in when losing weight is to not consider it as part of a diet. One of Wansink’s major mantras is “The best diet is the one you don’t know you’re on.”

According to Wansink, the key to not knowing we’re dieting is to attack the “mindless margin.” This refers to the excess amount of calories, a few hundred usually, we eat a day, not due to hunger, but due to cues that tell us to keep eating. We may also without knowing eat a few hundred calories less and this too is the mindless margin. It is Wansink’s mission to show us the cues that make us eat both more and less every day and show how these few hundred calories add up over the years resulting in a significant weight gain or weight loss. If we want to achieve the latter, Wansink recommends that we learn to reengineer our eating cues so that we eat 100-200 calories less a day. He also of course shows us what signals will cause us to eat extra calories so that we can be mindful of these cues.

He conducts many studies showing what makes us eat more without our not even knowing it. For example, big portions in big bowls and on big plates encourage us to eat even when we would have had a sense of fullness by completing a smaller portion on a smaller dish. Getting free food causes us to overeat because we’re so many of us are programmed to get stuff for free even if it means eating stale, crappy tasting food and lots of it.

In addition to warning us of certain scenarios or conditions that might prompt us to overeat, he gives “Reengineering Strategies” to employ as we attack the mindless margin. His first one is worth the price of the book alone. We should consider eating 20 percent less food than we think we crave because in the end, Wansink writes, you won’t miss it. He writes, “In most of our studies, people can eat 20 percent less without noticing it. If they eat 30 percent less they realize it, but 20 percent is still under the radar screen.” This matter of eating 20 percent less is part of building the habit of eating until you’re 80 percent full, a technique employed, Wansink writes, by the Okinawans whose expression for this 80 percent stop-point is hara hachi bu.

Accompanying the 20 percent less principle is the principle of eating 20 percent more fruits and vegetables. Putting more low-calorie-dense foods in our gut, like most vegetables, gives us more volume and less calories. This principle is one encouraged by a diet book that Wansink actually likes and recommends—The Volumetrics Eating Plan by Dr. Barbara Rolls.

Showing us all the cues that contribute to mindless eating—such as eating mindlessly while watching TV or navigating across the Internet—and giving us dozens of “Reengineering Strategies” to cut into our mindless margin, Wansink has written a sane, scientifically- and psychologically-sound book that gives us the tools to escape the learned helplessness of futile diets and eat with pleasure in moderation.

For me, Mindless Eating is one of the two life savers in a myriad of phony diet books. The other is In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan. 

Comments

[Tom Welch]

Compared to Western Europe, like France or Germany, food is very cheap here in the USA...why many of us pig out.

[jeffrey McMahon]

Especially junk food. You can buy thousands of calories at Taco Bell, etc. for cheap.