Why the key to losing weight may be enjoying a treat

It’s not just what you eat, but how you think about it that matters. The mind-body connection can shape our appetite because our expectation of what we've eaten influences the brain's perceptions of hunger and satiation.

If confronted with a delectable chocolate bar or a low-calorie, naturally sweetened alternative, which would you pick?

Most of us may rationally know we should pick the latter, but a tasty treat is incredibly hard to avoid, making it hard for individuals who are trying to lose weight to maintain a diet.

We're wired to crave energy dense, sweet treats, partly because our early ancestors once depended on it.

And to add to this challenge, our environment is filled with high-calorie, ultra-processed foods, which when we do eat them, can increase feelings of guilt around our eating habits.

"Ultra-processed products are essentially like being at a heavy metal concert. They're designed to drown everything else out. And it's really hard for folks to tune in to the subtle classical music of a fruit or a vegetable," says Ashley Gearhardt, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan.

But research points to the idea that to maintain a healthier weight, we shouldn't only focus on what we eat – but our mindset around food. In fact, there are health benefits to finding pleasure in eating, precisely because the expectation of what we've eaten goes on to shape how hungry we are.

Unsatisfying 'healthy' milkshakes

In a now well-known experiment published 15 years ago, a group of scientists found that what we believe we are eating can affect how our body responds.

A team led by Alia Crum, a psychologist at Stanford University in the US, demonstrated that if participants believed they were eating a decadent high-calorie milkshake, their body's hormonal response differed depending on what they believed they were consuming – not how many calories they actually consumed.   

Participants were given the exact same milkshake but were either told it was healthy and only 140 calories or that it was a 620-calorie "indulgent" shake. In reality, it was only 380 calories.

When participants believed they were drinking the "indulgent" shake, they experienced a significantly sharper drop in the hunger hormone ghrelin, which stimulates appetite and tends to rise when we are hungry and drop when we're full. But when they were told they were drinking a healthy shake, there was less of a drop in ghrelin.

This revealed that their mindset and expectations about the food altered how their body responded. "Believing you're eating enough makes your body respond as if it's had........

© BBC