I was just at the 2011 American Psychological Association Convention in Washinton DC where Brian Wansink gave an interesting talk on some of the latest work he has been doing on mindless eating (click here or here to visit his websites, which contains great summaries of his fascinating food research).
Near the end of his talk, he spoke about some of the latest findings from his National Mindless Eating Challenge in which individuals are instructed to make a change or set an eating goal that fits with their lifestyle (sound familiar?). One of the goals of this research is to examine whether certain changes (e.g., using a smaller plate) are more effective than others or more effective for certain types of people.
Wansink reported that they are finding that people who make changes tend to lose weight; however, the really interesting finding was that the rate of weight loss tended to accelerate over time. That is to say that people might lose a pound a week at the beginning, but then two pounds a week later on, and three pounds a week further down the road. Typically, one would expect the opposite sort of pattern, so this was initially puzzling to the investigators. What they found however, is that people who made a single change and stuck to it started to see results and were encouraged by those results. The acceleration in weight loss came when they independently added another change on top of the first (e.g., never eat a meal without a fruit or vegetable on the table).
So, this is really interesting! What might it mean for you? You don’t have to change the world in a day. Make a single change today that fits into your life and is something that you will commit to and stick with. If that change is working for you, you might find yourself looking for the “next step” not too far in the future.
Cheers,
Larry