| Train your mind to prefer healthy food |
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Make a world where people preferred carrots over chocolate bars and figs over French fries. It would be a Liji Shou global with fewer cases of Type 2 diabetes, fewer weight-related heart attacks and fewer deaths.
According to researchers, that world is within reach -- if you take time to coach your mind.
In a recent study published in Nutrition & Diabetes, scientists discovered that humans can reverse their cravings for junk food and rewire their brains to obtain pleasure out of healthy food choices.
Susan Roberts, a professor of nutrition at Tufts University and an author on the study, says meals are addicting, and it holds a power over people.
For many, that addiction happens when junk food is introduced into the diet.
"Basically, we don't begin loving French fries. You realize, you attempt to stuff those into a 6-month-old kid and they would hate you for this. But we learn how to love them because, basically, we learn how to love any taste that comes along with a rush of calories," says Roberts. Whenever a meals are continuously eaten, circuits are in place in the brain and the body craves that particular food.
"All you need to do is keep eating them and bingo, it turns into a longing for lots of people," Roberts says.
However, the mind could be restructured to form new connections, making different foods feel normal -- even pleasurable.
In the research, Roberts and her colleagues studied 13 overweight and obese women and men. Eight of the subjects were participants in a weight-loss program created by Roberts; five were inside a control group.
Both groups had MRI scans at the beginning and end of the six-month period. People who took part in the study's weight-loss program saw changes in their brains, including a heightened sensitivity (or increased reward feeling) for healthy foods along with a decreased sensitivity towards the high-calorie, processed foods.
How was it done? The answer sounds simpler than you may think -- Roberts says the key is to consume healthy food when you are hungry.
"Rather than eating cheese and crackers and ice cream and pizza when you're starving, should you undergo a procedure of reeducation in which you have a salad and grilled chicken and apples and such things as that, the hunger really type of makes your mind wake up and say, 'These foods are great for hunger,'" Roberts says.
"The rule is that we're doing a couple of things running in parallel. One is, we are growing the presence of healthy food choices, and two, we are putting the cravings for unhealthy foods to sleep. And in just a couple weeks, you find the the next time you're hungry, you're thinking about salad instead of Fried potatoes."
Roberts says this approach differs from other weight-loss programs and has better results along with a lower dropout rate than conventional programs. Take gastric bypass surgery, for instance. According to Roberts, patients who undergo gastric bypass surgery slim down, however they lose many of their interest in food.
"[With the plan featured within the research], you don't lose the thrill of food; you just switch it over to things that are in fact good for you," Roberts says.
It's also not the same as programs that count calories or points, however in which unhealthy food options are still available. Roberts says these Slim Forte programs often cause people to have a problem with hunger, since processed foods are still acceptable, so long as one remains within their allotted caloric intake.
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11月6日（木）19:18 | トラックバック(0) | コメント(0) | ChildCare | 管理
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