Susan B Roberts, Ph.D. is professor of nutrition and psychiatry at Tufts and director of the Tufts’ Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA) Energy and Metabolism Laboratory. Robers and Betty Kelly Sargent have come out with a book called The Instinct Diet. From her research, Roberts has found that people eat based on biological instincts.

These 5 instincts are:

Hunger – we eat to satisfy ourselves and we like the feeling of being full.

Availability – the more easily food is available to us, the more we want to eat it.

Calorie density – we love to eat food that is full of calories.

Familiarity – we like to eat food that we recognize and associate with experiences that make us feel safe.

Variety – we like variety and the more variety of food that we have, the more we eat.

Roberts focuses on the Familiarity Instinct, and why it so strongly influences our eating habits. Roberts points out that we eat foods we like and are familiar with and when we eat these types of foods our familiarity instinct is activated. A perfect example of this is the effectiveness of food commercial that show people eating pizza or drinking a particular soft drink. When we see others eating and drinking certain food they become familiar to us.

Roberts gives several tips to work with our instincts to improve eating habits and control weight gain:

• Introduce new foods into your diet by initially eating small amounts of new foods.
• Gradually substitute healthy foods for unhealthy foods
• Eat healthy food when hungry to have your brain start to look forward to eating healthy foods to satisfying your hunger.
• Have a “time to stop eating” signal that you use at end of your meal. This could be a cup of tea or piece of sugarless gum.
• Give yourself structure – eat only at planed meal and snack times. Your body will stop having random hunger and cravings between eating times.

To curb cravings:

• When you have a craving, instead of giving in, tap your forehead until your mind is distracted from the craving.
• Wait 15 to 20 minutes or call a friend to do something besides eating.

If you are interested in a supportive way to work with beliefs and associations that can sabotage your weight loss visit

http://manifestingwellbeing.com/manifest/

Here’s to your success!

Deborah Barnett, Ph.D.

www.ManifestingWellBeing.com

www.DeborahBarnett.com