Meals and snacks are about the most frequent multisensory events in our lives. You should learn the full pleasure of eating without feeling full.

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Deliberate Imagery

Imagery is the mental construct of experience. External and internal sensations, thoughts, feelings and emotions are combined with similar imagery stored in memory. They elicit responses before conscious awareness. Most mental constructs of experience form, combine with similar images and retire into memory without any conscious awareness.

When we speak of images we usually mean something we see elicited by external sensation or retrieved from memory. When referring to other senses, we usually specify touch, smell, sound, or taste images.

Even when speaking of imagery, we usually mean something created or imagined representing sight, sound, touch, smell or taste.

Imagery stored in our memory includes much, much more. It elicits entire experiences constructed of sensations, thoughts, actions, feelings and emotions. It even includes evaluations of the consequences of our responses.

Regular imagery includes mindless scanning. When the mind wanders to unrelated thoughts and feelings, the mind continues to scan the image without due attention to associated sensations, thoughts, feelings, emotions and significance of details.

Deliberate imagery pays conscious attention to details of all associated sensations, thoughts, feelings, emotions and their significance.

Deliberate Food Imagery

Our first impression is what meal or snack this is. Time of day and when we last ate calls up subliminal imagery and sets our expectations. What we see, smell and hear is immediately related to our memory and trims our expectations. If there’s a lot going on around us, that may all be subliminal. We may finish our meal or snack without any conscious appreciation of what we just ate.

Make a conscious assessment of what’s there in front of you. First of all, is it more or less than what you expected? Is it more than what you think you should eat?

Look at it carefully. Do you really see all its details? Look at it, then close your eyes. Can you still see it in your mind’s eye? If you’ve never done this before, you may not see anything with your eyes closed. Concentrate. Concentrate hard on details. That way you’ll learn to image in your mind’s eye what you see with your eyes open.

Estimate how much is there. The average breakfast in this country contains about 500 calories. The average lunch contains about 750 calories and the average supper about 1,000 calories. An average snack has about 150 calories.

The best way to learn what you’re eating is to look it up in a nutrition reference book or a smartphone mobile app. Also, you should look at the labels on food containers. They list serving sizes and nutrient content.

Almost anything you put in your mouth with a fork or spoon has 50 calories in it. Except non-starchy vegetables. Even a salad has dressing on it. A thin slice of deli meat contains about 50 calories but a 4 ounce piece of meat contains 300 calories. Cooked potatoes have 100 calories in 4 ounces. A handful of nuts has 200 calories. Everything soon adds up to more than 2,500 calories a day.

The details you can image in your mind’s eye are what your brain will store in memory. There’s lots of details beyond just what you see. Your imagery skill in shaping your subliminal memory and routine responses depends on deliberate food Imagery.

Now, here’s Deliberate Practice. This is how to practice the skill of food imagery.

Take a photo of the meal or snack.

Deliberately imagine eating the original food items.

Before you eat anything, deliberately create full imagery of the imagined experience. But don’t eat anything yet.

Next, cut up the food items and reduce them so the total has 1/3 less calories and then take another photo. As much as possible reduce carbohydrates and fats while keeping protein and fiber.

Then imagine eating the reduced food item but assign the same imagined experience with the full food item to that second imagery.

The first time or two that you do all this, go ahead and eat the original food item. Check how you feel after, compared with what you had imagined before eating it. Then look at the photo of the 1/3 reduced food item. Apply the imagery of the actual experience eating the full food item to the imagined experience of eating the reduced food item.

This all sounds complicated but it’s how you can practice assigning pleasurable features from one image to another.

Multisensory Human-Food Interaction

Intake of food is an essential part of life. Everything we’re made of and everything we do requires energy from food. The balance of energy intake and output creates hunger and appetite with responses eating that are terminated by feelings of fullness.

When there’s plenty of food, we don’t eat to survive. Hunger and appetite are no longer the main drivers. Instead, we eat by automatic routine. When to stop eating is determined by a decrease in pleasure while eating and an increase in feelings of fullness.

Mindless eating is what happens when we’re not paying attention. We eat until we’re full. What’s there in front of us is what we eat. If we’re not full, we go get some more.

Did you enjoy that meal? ”Guess so. Can’t eat any more.”

Mindful eating makes eating a pleasure. Deliberately review everything you sense, think, feel and experience. Make a deliberate effort to recall imagery from previous experiences consuming similar food.

Avoid distraction by conversation, TV or entertainment. During the first 20 minutes of your meal or snack, give pleasure of eating your full attention.

Consciously rate pleasure of eating minute by minute starting the scale low and increasing unit by unit for several minutes to a peak that begins to decrease minute by minute. That’s when to stop eating. Don’t keep eating just because it’s there. Don’t pause and wait for another course so you can start all over.

Above all, eat to enjoy it. Not to just get full.

Rate the intensity of sensory response by recalling the experience of eating a meal or snack an hour or two after you’ve eaten. Assess the intensity of imagery by the involuntary impulse to move your tongue, lick your lips and swallow saliva flowing into your mouth.

Between meals, consciously recall all associated sensations, thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Concentrate enough to elicit general feelings of pleasure and specific responses making you lick your lips and swallow.

Deliberately review everything you sense, think, feel and experience transferring your full conscious attention back and forth among imagery of real and imagined experiences.

Repetition

Multisensory food imagery makes it possible to rehearse your skills even between meals and snacks. The brain stores imagery from mental rehearsal the same way it stores imagery from real time experience. Complete with all its sensations, thoughts, actions, feelings and emotion.

Do it over and over, real time and imagined, until you always do it right!

Practice improves any new skill. Feel good when you succeed and figure out why when you don’t. Eventually you’ll simply know what to eat and how to enjoy it.

You won’t even have to think much about it. You’ll eat right, even when you’re busy with something else. You’ll finish eating without having to figure out what’s enough.

Most important of all, your new health practice will be your automatic response. You won’t even be conscious of all the decisions you’re making. Subliminal imagery stored in your memory will dominate the original constructs that directed your previous health practices.

Summary

If your maximum waist circumference is more than 40% of your standing height, you’re eating too much!

Fixing that is more than just learning you have a problem. It’s even more than learning what to do about it.

Preventing and Reversing Diabetes requires deliberate effort gradually to adopt good health practices. Requires more than increasing knowledge. Those practices involve sensations, thoughts, feelings, actions and emotions.

Let us help you retrain your subliminal automatic responses. That will make you look good, perform well and feel great!

We are pleased to share our blog articles with you, and we are always interested to hear from our readers. Our website address is: www.herdhealthcare.com

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