Over the years, I’ve been treating over-weight patients who wish to change their eating habits, so that they don’t regain weight, once they’ve lost it. Most of them have a history of past failures. Collectively they’ve tried an incredible number of diets, but most of them eventually have regained the weight that they had lost. When I tell them that it’s relatively easy to change an eating habit and that it can usually be done within about 3 weeks, they can’t believe it. “That’s impossible”, they say, “I’ve tried every imaginable diet in the last ten years; I’ve always regained any weight that I had lost and I’ve never lost my craving for sweets”.

You might be wondering how it can be so easy to change eating habits, when some 95% of obese people can’t seem to manage it.Imagine two arrows pointing in different directions. One arrow, number one, represents the physical aspect of our behaviour, such as our tastes (sweets, fried foods, liquor, etc.), our snacking habits, our eating habits, etc. The number two arrow (described below), represents our mind.

Our tastes are learned behaviours, just like any habit, and they can be changed in as little as three weeks, provided we make a consistent effort to avoid them for that period of time. Most of you are probably familiar with the famous experiment of the Russian scientist, Dr. Pavlov. Each morning he would ring a bell, bring the test dog some food and the dog would salivate. One morning he rang the bell, but didn’t bring the food. He was astounded to find the dog salivated anyway in response to the bell alone. He had just discovered the principle of the conditioned reflex. In response to conditioning, (Pavlov ringing the bell), the dog had learned to associate the sound of the bell and the food. In the same way, for example, some of us learn over time to associate food with stress. Obesity can be seen as a complex disease caused by a variety of bad habits that differ from subject to subject.

If the Pavlov experiment is continued, the dog will continue to salivate at the sound of the bell for a little while, but eventually it will stop associating the sound of the bell with food.

Let’s take the example of sugar in coffee. We know that a taste is a learned behaviour like a habit. I challenge anyone to stop taking sugar in coffee for three weeks, and I virtually guarantee that after three weeks, you’ll have lost your taste for sweetened coffee.

However, if it’s going to work, you can’t deviate at all. If you use sugar in your coffee only a few times in the three weeks, you’ll probably lose some weight, but you won’t lose your taste for sweetened coffee.

This learning and unlearning habitual behaviour is a physiological phenomenon that is universal among all animals. However, man is endowed with the additional ability to think and we know that the mind is dominant. It is represented by arrow two.

If your mind is saying (while you’re trying to break your taste buds of the sugar habit): “Why should I deprive myself; I don’t deserve such punishment; everybody else has sugar in coffee; it tastes so good; I’ll never be able to drink coffee without it; my body needs it; it’ll never work”. The first time you have sugar in your coffee again, even though, physically it may taste nauseatingly sweet, you’ll have maintained your psychological taste for it and you’ll think that it is delicious. I’ve seen this sort of thing happen hundreds of times to participants in our program with reference to a variety of taste habits (coke, chips, bread, butter, etc.) Try it and let me know how you make out.

Our eating habits are easy to change, but we have to remember that the mind is dominant. If we are mentally programming ourselves in a manner contrary to the change that we are trying to achieve, it will never work. Your two arrows, physical and psychological, must be aimed in the same direction.

We successfully teach people every day to change the direction of the physical and psychological arrows.