As a confirmed mindless eater (who knows better than to go to buffets, salad bars, and all-you-can-eat restaurants), I applaud Brian Wansink’s new initiative…the Mindless Method. As one of their banners proclaims, “the best diet is the diet you don’t know you’re on.” In other words, to keep your weight down, it’s important to make the lifestyle changes that let you do that instead of always feeling deprived and “on a diet.”

The Mindless Method Guides You to Better Eating Habits

So instead of counting your calories, the Mindless Method helps you avoid your personal “mindless” traps and designs a healthy eating program that is tailored to your particular challenges. It’s not free–plans run between $12 and $20 per month for full site access, but sometimes paying for something helps people stick to it better. “I paid for this, so I’m going to use it.”

I’m always surprised when people resent paying for a diet program–most people think nothing of spending tons of money on nails, hair, make-up, clothes–and what truly makes the biggest difference in your appearance is your weight. Not to mention the amount of money people waste on prescription drugs and medical procedures that are 100% avoidable with weight loss. Oh, and there are those little things called cancer and heart disease that are tremendously weight-related.  I didn’t join Mindless Method, though, as I’m comfortable with my Jenny Craig maintenance. Still, if I were first starting out again, it might be something I would seriously consider, if for no other reason than to enjoy Brian Wansink’s sense of humor. If a person can make weight control funny, that’s worth the money in my book. And you gotta love the North Dakota wine and the bottomless soup bowl….


5 Comments

KanikaL · April 27, 2010 at 10:34 am

I have to agree with the sentiment that diets sometime make people believe that they are depriving themselves. I too, like many others, do try and watch my weight. However, dieting has never suited me because I always end up cranky and end up binging out of my starvation for real food!
As I get older, I have just adopted a “everything in moderation” method that has seem to work for me in order to keep a healthy appearance! I don’t think I could resist french fries for my whole life!

Laura Freberg · April 27, 2010 at 12:54 pm

I agree, Kanika! Everybody has a favorite food. Okay, I have several favorite foods. If I thought I couldn’t have them anymore, I’d be unhappy. I just can’t have them every day, but I can live with that.

KatelynMedina · April 27, 2010 at 8:56 pm

I found this blog interesting because I had previously enjoyed listening to Brian Wansick speak at Cal Poly. He discussed many interesting notions about eating obsesively without noticing. For instance, people eat more when sitting in front of the T.V. or when presented with a never ending bowl of soup. I also found it interesting that people will eat large amounts of stale movie popcorn just because it is “in front of them”. They thus are not being mindful of the taste, they are just scarfing down anything in their presence.

kjchin · April 30, 2010 at 7:11 pm

I agree with Brian Wansick, we definitely eat mindlessly. Well I know for sure that I do. I went to take a look at the Mindless Method site, and I agree that knowing what you eat can lead you to make a change in your diet. In one of my nutrition classes, we used a program called “Diet Analysis” and we had to type in everything that we at for a week (I think that was the period of time in which we did the project) and basically analyze what nutrients we were lacking and exceeding. Most of us exceeded sugars (desserts) and sodium (junk food). So knowing what we ate, we then knew what we SHOULD really be eating.

Laura’s Psychology Blog » current stories for April 27th, 2010 · April 27, 2010 at 7:22 am

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