In this Exclusive Boot Camp FX Coaching Session with the author of Mindless Eating, you will discover some simple, tiny changes you can make to LOSE WEIGHT FASTER.
Dr. Wansink is the author of "Mindless Eating" and director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University.
Curtis Ludlow: Hello everyone. This is Curtis Ludlow with another Boot Camp FX coaching call. We have with us today Dr. Brian Wansink. He is the Director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University and the author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think. Today, he will be sharing with us some secret tips to help you lose weight almost effortlessly. Dr. Wansink, thank you for taking the time to be here today.
Dr. Brian Wansink: It's great to be with you today.
Curtis Ludlow: Great. Well, I know your time is limited, so let's just get straight to it. First of all, what is mindless eating?
Curtis Ludlow: Interesting. Well, I first came across your work reading another book and the study seems to be coming up over and over and over again. There is Ice Cream Study and Popcorn Study. And the ice cream one, I just came across, and that's very interesting, about these 83 - well, maybe you can explain it.
Dr. Brian Wansink: Well, and we've done a number of - I can say a number of Popcorn Studies.
Curtis Ludlow: The one I came across was the 83 nutritionists or...
Dr. Brian Wansink: Yeah, sure, sure, yeah, yeah. In particular case what we found is that the cues signal you to eat too much it can be something as simple as the size of a bowl or the size of a spoon, what the person is doing next to you, what the lighting is in the room, and by simply adjusting these things you can end up eating a whole lot less and a whole lot more.
The study you are referring to there is really a study we - when I was a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and we had a big ice cream buffet reception for people when we - these are people who are nutrition professors and grad students. And what we do is when people came in they were randomly given either a large bowl for their ice cream or just a medium-sized bowl for their ice cream.
In either case, their bowls, you can never even fill up, because they are huge to begin with.
And then what also happened is that it appeared as we through the line, we just switched out the ice cream scoop to a given either - so people were using 3-ounce scoop or 2-ounce scoop and what we really found is that people are tremendously influenced by these cues.
If you have a big bowl, let's say a 24-ounce bowl it may suggest that it's normal, typical and reasonable to serve more and so people mindlessly do so.
They end up putting on average about 50 - I think it's like about 51% more ice cream into a large bowl than a slightly smaller bowl if they are given a large bowl and a large ice cream scoop.
Curtis Ludlow: That's for me then...
Dr. Brian Wansink: And even experts are influenced by this. And so, for those of us who say, "You know, I've got a lot of will power. I don't over serve myself at meal time. I don't have second or third ones I really need it. I don't snack." If your environment is somehow broad, you would mindlessly overeat. If a person - we have lots of cool videos of this.
A person wants to go to - even just Google my name like for YouTube and just you are going to YouTube and type in Wansink or Brian Wansink, you'll find slides dozens and dozens of these that have been shot for different documentary and things like that. So, it's amazing.
But the key to this reversing mindless eating is not to be mindful all the time because most of us have full time job who can't take a bite and say, "Okay, am I full yet? We don't take another bite, am I full yet?" No. Some people can, but the vast majority doesn't.
Curtis Ludlow: Right.
Dr. Brian Wansink: Okay. For the most of us, it's a lot easier for us to simply change the size of a plate, change the size of a bowl, to arrange or cover to the first thing we see is the more healthy snack and that's less healthy snack. We remove a dish and it's 6 feet away, these are mindless ways to getting small changes of your environment that nudges you into eating and nudge you into overeating.
Let me give another example. We've done a study - well, series of studies actually that showed that if you give somebody a 10-inch dinner plate, a typical person is going to serve about 4 ounces of pasta in a pasta dinner. If instead you give them a 12-inch dinner plate, which is a little bit bigger, 4 ounces on a 10-inch dinner plate, I mean, that this doesn't look like an appetizers work.
So what you do, you add another ounce and typically we find that the average person serves themselves 22% more food when it's served in a 12-inch plate, even this bumps up from 10 to 12 calories or 10 to 12 inches rather. And this is tremendous. This is a great mindless way for a person to eat a bit less but not even realize it because in your mind, in both cases you ate what you believe was a full plate of food.
In another study we did something with the secretaries at University, give them Hershey's Kisses, candies on their desk or you give them candies that were just 6 feet away from their desk exact same number and you refill the bowl every night for a month. And one thing we found that simply having a candy dish 6 feet away from you and leaving that typical person to eat not nine candies at night but only four candies.
And that ends up being the difference of about 125 calories which your listeners will know can total up to about an extra 12 pounds that a person wouldn't have gained if they simply with that candy just test you 6 feet away from their desks.
So we did this and when we ask people, "Hey, what was it, 6 feet too far to walk for a snack?"
People say, no, no. They said 6 feet, gave a pause and say "geez, I am really that hungry?" Finally the answer is no.
So, I mean, the key to mindless eating, again it is not mindful eating.
But what we're doing is determining what small changes you can make in your environment, really small, really, really small changes you can make is mindlessly eat less not even really knowing it.
Some people might be serving off a counter instead of off the stove or off the kitchen counters instead of right at the table.
Some people could eat something as simple as a time for a small rule that you have no more than two cold cans of soda or a beer or whatever your beverage of choice is and refrigerate at the same time.
Doing so, I have put the limit how much you end up eating. Just I want to drink two or something and then wait around for the third to get cold. So there are tons and tons of these ideas you can find and - well, in my book Mindless Eating, which you can get from any library, you can get it from any book store, amazon.com and there is also a series of - a number of these you could find just surfing the web or on our website mindlesseating dot org.
What's important to realize is that if you want to pick something, we tell people that if you are going to make too many changes to your life that comes with reversing mindless eating, they are going to backfire if you don't pick if you don't pick the ones that are most relevant for you and most likely worth.
There is over 250 questions we have, what we call them Mindless Methods. There are 250 changes you can make and these are just Mindless Methods you have to pick the ones that are most relevant for you because if your problems is meal binging and you start using tips that relate to snacks craving or to restaurant indulging, it's just not going to work because you have to be very specific about identifying first of all what your main problem area is that could be decked up desk for dining, the meal stuff and it could be snack raisings whatever, identify one to three small tiny daily environmental changes that you can make that will mindlessly lead you to eat a little less, okay?
Curtis Ludlow: Well, in your experience what are the top three changes that somebody could make (multiple speakers) contact?
Dr. Brian Wansink: Yeah. That would be really - that would be hard for me...
Curtis Ludlow: That's excess.
Dr. Brian Wansink: To say. Yeah, I mean...
Curtis Ludlow: Yeah.
Dr. Brian Wansink: I know in my personal life three that made the biggest difference for me was just don't ever serve food off the table. Instead, we pre-plate all of our food in my family, and pre-plate at the counter off the stove.
And, in studies we have done, the average male end up eating about 29% less if they do that. The average female only end up eating about 9% to 10% less doing something like that.
Curtis Ludlow: Okay.
Dr. Brian Wansink: So again that's for all people and it's not going to be - it's not going to work for some who does not have the - for a guy, for instance, whose tendency isn't to eat seconds and thirds of something. My wife happens to be a fresh chef. So my predisposition is to eat seconds and thirds of everything is incredibly high.
Curtis Ludlow: Sure.
Dr. Brian Wansink: I think you know the first - so, I mean, that's why you find things that are really, really nicely tailored and that were true-off. Now, the other things that's - people who tend to like a lot of juice or milk or, you know, wine or whatever the case is, it's not just the size of the glass that's in front of you, although it does dramatically, meaning you will pour less if it's a wine in a smaller wine glass, even if it's going to strain even really less wide glass but simply the shape of these glasses.
In our studies we found that people have a tendency to pour a whole lot more in a short wide glass .
Let's say you have short wide - you have a 20 ounce juice glass that's short and wider, 20 ounce juice glass that's tall and skinny.
You will pour a lot more into that short wide glass because what you do is you look at the height of liquid as you pour, you don't look at the width, nobody does that and as you know, we find the typical person they pour about 30% more, actually 33% more liquid in a wide glass than do tall, skinny glass of the same volume.
So, from my personal experience nothing works. I mean, I've got - people write in and, you know, we get over 200 studies who have done different things, three changes that they make and you know, as *****, mentioned why?
So the key is to find out what is their biggest Achilles heel.
Is it snacking, well, here is a bunch of things that can change. Is it going to restaurant and really blowing it? Well, there is a bunch of things you can change there too. The idea is to find the areas the most problematic.
Like I had somebody a while back, we are doing a makeover for a big show and this is somebody who is convinced their biggest problem was party binging, meaning they go to whatever Super Bowl parties or whatever, they were just totally confident. Just eat way, way too much and we know we came up with these easy solutions to get that under control given this guy's all patterns, really started saying well, how often does he have to go? "Oh, man. It's like three or four time a year. This is every time." You know, I said, if it's three or four times a year, this is not your problem area.
Curtis Ludlow: Right.
Dr. Wansink is the author of "Mindless Eating" and director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University.
Transcript of Boot Camp FX Coaching Call with Dr. Brian Wansink
Curtis Ludlow: Hello everyone. This is Curtis Ludlow with another Boot Camp FX coaching call. We have with us today Dr. Brian Wansink. He is the Director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University and the author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think. Today, he will be sharing with us some secret tips to help you lose weight almost effortlessly. Dr. Wansink, thank you for taking the time to be here today.
Dr. Brian Wansink: It's great to be with you today.
Curtis Ludlow: Great. Well, I know your time is limited, so let's just get straight to it. First of all, what is mindless eating?
Dr. Brian Wansink: Well, the typical person makes about 200 decisions a day about food. It is not just whether you're going to have Froot Loops or Frosted Flakes for breakfast, but then it's being whether it's two-thirds of a bowl or three-quarters of a bowl or second bowl, whether you are going to use full fat milk or regular milk, those will be all the decisions you don't make throughout the day and that you don't really make - because at the end, it would be things like whether you decide not to grab that one in the break or whether you decide not to have ice cream.
What's going on with this is that our environment has a tremendous influence on nudging us one direction or the other causing us to overeat whether they eat the right amounts or they eat even less. The good news about this is that these 200 decisions they were not even aware of making that sort of a diet can also be very, very, very easily reversed to eat less mindlessly instead of mindlessly overeat.
Curtis Ludlow: Interesting. Well, I first came across your work reading another book and the study seems to be coming up over and over and over again. There is Ice Cream Study and Popcorn Study. And the ice cream one, I just came across, and that's very interesting, about these 83 - well, maybe you can explain it.
Dr. Brian Wansink: Well, and we've done a number of - I can say a number of Popcorn Studies.
Curtis Ludlow: The one I came across was the 83 nutritionists or...
Dr. Brian Wansink: Yeah, sure, sure, yeah, yeah. In particular case what we found is that the cues signal you to eat too much it can be something as simple as the size of a bowl or the size of a spoon, what the person is doing next to you, what the lighting is in the room, and by simply adjusting these things you can end up eating a whole lot less and a whole lot more.
The study you are referring to there is really a study we - when I was a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and we had a big ice cream buffet reception for people when we - these are people who are nutrition professors and grad students. And what we do is when people came in they were randomly given either a large bowl for their ice cream or just a medium-sized bowl for their ice cream.
In either case, their bowls, you can never even fill up, because they are huge to begin with.
And then what also happened is that it appeared as we through the line, we just switched out the ice cream scoop to a given either - so people were using 3-ounce scoop or 2-ounce scoop and what we really found is that people are tremendously influenced by these cues.
If you have a big bowl, let's say a 24-ounce bowl it may suggest that it's normal, typical and reasonable to serve more and so people mindlessly do so.
They end up putting on average about 50 - I think it's like about 51% more ice cream into a large bowl than a slightly smaller bowl if they are given a large bowl and a large ice cream scoop.
Curtis Ludlow: That's for me then...
Dr. Brian Wansink: And even experts are influenced by this. And so, for those of us who say, "You know, I've got a lot of will power. I don't over serve myself at meal time. I don't have second or third ones I really need it. I don't snack." If your environment is somehow broad, you would mindlessly overeat. If a person - we have lots of cool videos of this.
A person wants to go to - even just Google my name like for YouTube and just you are going to YouTube and type in Wansink or Brian Wansink, you'll find slides dozens and dozens of these that have been shot for different documentary and things like that. So, it's amazing.
But the key to this reversing mindless eating is not to be mindful all the time because most of us have full time job who can't take a bite and say, "Okay, am I full yet? We don't take another bite, am I full yet?" No. Some people can, but the vast majority doesn't.
Curtis Ludlow: Right.
Dr. Brian Wansink: Okay. For the most of us, it's a lot easier for us to simply change the size of a plate, change the size of a bowl, to arrange or cover to the first thing we see is the more healthy snack and that's less healthy snack. We remove a dish and it's 6 feet away, these are mindless ways to getting small changes of your environment that nudges you into eating and nudge you into overeating.
Let me give another example. We've done a study - well, series of studies actually that showed that if you give somebody a 10-inch dinner plate, a typical person is going to serve about 4 ounces of pasta in a pasta dinner. If instead you give them a 12-inch dinner plate, which is a little bit bigger, 4 ounces on a 10-inch dinner plate, I mean, that this doesn't look like an appetizers work.
So what you do, you add another ounce and typically we find that the average person serves themselves 22% more food when it's served in a 12-inch plate, even this bumps up from 10 to 12 calories or 10 to 12 inches rather. And this is tremendous. This is a great mindless way for a person to eat a bit less but not even realize it because in your mind, in both cases you ate what you believe was a full plate of food.
In another study we did something with the secretaries at University, give them Hershey's Kisses, candies on their desk or you give them candies that were just 6 feet away from their desk exact same number and you refill the bowl every night for a month. And one thing we found that simply having a candy dish 6 feet away from you and leaving that typical person to eat not nine candies at night but only four candies.
And that ends up being the difference of about 125 calories which your listeners will know can total up to about an extra 12 pounds that a person wouldn't have gained if they simply with that candy just test you 6 feet away from their desks.
So we did this and when we ask people, "Hey, what was it, 6 feet too far to walk for a snack?"
People say, no, no. They said 6 feet, gave a pause and say "geez, I am really that hungry?" Finally the answer is no.
So, I mean, the key to mindless eating, again it is not mindful eating.
But what we're doing is determining what small changes you can make in your environment, really small, really, really small changes you can make is mindlessly eat less not even really knowing it.
Some people might be serving off a counter instead of off the stove or off the kitchen counters instead of right at the table.
Some people could eat something as simple as a time for a small rule that you have no more than two cold cans of soda or a beer or whatever your beverage of choice is and refrigerate at the same time.
Doing so, I have put the limit how much you end up eating. Just I want to drink two or something and then wait around for the third to get cold. So there are tons and tons of these ideas you can find and - well, in my book Mindless Eating, which you can get from any library, you can get it from any book store, amazon.com and there is also a series of - a number of these you could find just surfing the web or on our website mindlesseating dot org.
What's important to realize is that if you want to pick something, we tell people that if you are going to make too many changes to your life that comes with reversing mindless eating, they are going to backfire if you don't pick if you don't pick the ones that are most relevant for you and most likely worth.
There is over 250 questions we have, what we call them Mindless Methods. There are 250 changes you can make and these are just Mindless Methods you have to pick the ones that are most relevant for you because if your problems is meal binging and you start using tips that relate to snacks craving or to restaurant indulging, it's just not going to work because you have to be very specific about identifying first of all what your main problem area is that could be decked up desk for dining, the meal stuff and it could be snack raisings whatever, identify one to three small tiny daily environmental changes that you can make that will mindlessly lead you to eat a little less, okay?
Curtis Ludlow: Well, in your experience what are the top three changes that somebody could make (multiple speakers) contact?
Dr. Brian Wansink: Yeah. That would be really - that would be hard for me...
Curtis Ludlow: That's excess.
Dr. Brian Wansink: To say. Yeah, I mean...
Curtis Ludlow: Yeah.
Dr. Brian Wansink: I know in my personal life three that made the biggest difference for me was just don't ever serve food off the table. Instead, we pre-plate all of our food in my family, and pre-plate at the counter off the stove.
And, in studies we have done, the average male end up eating about 29% less if they do that. The average female only end up eating about 9% to 10% less doing something like that.
Curtis Ludlow: Okay.
Dr. Brian Wansink: So again that's for all people and it's not going to be - it's not going to work for some who does not have the - for a guy, for instance, whose tendency isn't to eat seconds and thirds of something. My wife happens to be a fresh chef. So my predisposition is to eat seconds and thirds of everything is incredibly high.
Curtis Ludlow: Sure.
Dr. Brian Wansink: I think you know the first - so, I mean, that's why you find things that are really, really nicely tailored and that were true-off. Now, the other things that's - people who tend to like a lot of juice or milk or, you know, wine or whatever the case is, it's not just the size of the glass that's in front of you, although it does dramatically, meaning you will pour less if it's a wine in a smaller wine glass, even if it's going to strain even really less wide glass but simply the shape of these glasses.
In our studies we found that people have a tendency to pour a whole lot more in a short wide glass .
Let's say you have short wide - you have a 20 ounce juice glass that's short and wider, 20 ounce juice glass that's tall and skinny.
You will pour a lot more into that short wide glass because what you do is you look at the height of liquid as you pour, you don't look at the width, nobody does that and as you know, we find the typical person they pour about 30% more, actually 33% more liquid in a wide glass than do tall, skinny glass of the same volume.
So, from my personal experience nothing works. I mean, I've got - people write in and, you know, we get over 200 studies who have done different things, three changes that they make and you know, as *****, mentioned why?
So the key is to find out what is their biggest Achilles heel.
Is it snacking, well, here is a bunch of things that can change. Is it going to restaurant and really blowing it? Well, there is a bunch of things you can change there too. The idea is to find the areas the most problematic.
Like I had somebody a while back, we are doing a makeover for a big show and this is somebody who is convinced their biggest problem was party binging, meaning they go to whatever Super Bowl parties or whatever, they were just totally confident. Just eat way, way too much and we know we came up with these easy solutions to get that under control given this guy's all patterns, really started saying well, how often does he have to go? "Oh, man. It's like three or four time a year. This is every time." You know, I said, if it's three or four times a year, this is not your problem area.
Curtis Ludlow: Right.
Dr. Brian Wansink: This is the rounding error on the year.
Curtis Ludlow: Right.
Dr. Brian Wansink: The first thing a person needs to do, again, the mindless myth helps you kind of take you through that, you can just read about that in the book too, helps you identify your major problem area, helps you figure out what are one or two or three, no more than three small tiny daily changes that you can make once in your environment that you never have to think back about you, then how to actually keep the change. Based on those stuff we tell when we work with people like something you want to change, just aim at changing for a month, after a month you can go right back to whatever you want to do.
The thing is changing something, whether you use smaller plates, so I am going to use, it's like, well, I don't know that could be - I do that forever? Most people - when people successfully 30 days even if they don't want to do it anymore, I should say generally they keep the change.
And after that point, we just give them or we recommend they just find three different changes to try and those are some really separate people. The key is nobody is going to lose 70 pounds in a month using this Mindless Eating method. But what they do do is we find in our study that people who say they don't even to just wait at all given these changes to make still end up losing on average about 2 pounds a month.
But the fact is this is effortless.
Curtis Ludlow: Right
Dr. Brian Wansink: And at the end of the year, people weighed 20 to 24 pounds less, maybe it's just fine.
Curtis Ludlow: Yeah, okay. Well, this is all really fascinating. Once again, let's - is it mindlesseating.org where people should go?
Dr. Brian Wansink: Yes. mindlesseating.org, my name is Brian Wansink. They can also play a bunch of things in YouTube if they want to within the Mindless Eating method there is way to tackle this and you can learn about that, you can review about that and the Book Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think much at all libraries, book stores, amazon.com, et cetera.
Curtis Ludlow: Great. Well, ladies and gentlemen, rush out and get your copy of Mindless Eating, the book. And Brian, thank you so much again for taking the time to tell us about your work. I really appreciate it.
Dr. Brian Wansink: Absolutely, I like that.
Curtis Ludlow: Okay, thank you. Take care now.
Curtis Ludlow: Right.
Dr. Brian Wansink: The first thing a person needs to do, again, the mindless myth helps you kind of take you through that, you can just read about that in the book too, helps you identify your major problem area, helps you figure out what are one or two or three, no more than three small tiny daily changes that you can make once in your environment that you never have to think back about you, then how to actually keep the change. Based on those stuff we tell when we work with people like something you want to change, just aim at changing for a month, after a month you can go right back to whatever you want to do.
The thing is changing something, whether you use smaller plates, so I am going to use, it's like, well, I don't know that could be - I do that forever? Most people - when people successfully 30 days even if they don't want to do it anymore, I should say generally they keep the change.
And after that point, we just give them or we recommend they just find three different changes to try and those are some really separate people. The key is nobody is going to lose 70 pounds in a month using this Mindless Eating method. But what they do do is we find in our study that people who say they don't even to just wait at all given these changes to make still end up losing on average about 2 pounds a month.
But the fact is this is effortless.
Curtis Ludlow: Right
Dr. Brian Wansink: And at the end of the year, people weighed 20 to 24 pounds less, maybe it's just fine.
Curtis Ludlow: Yeah, okay. Well, this is all really fascinating. Once again, let's - is it mindlesseating.org where people should go?
Dr. Brian Wansink: Yes. mindlesseating.org, my name is Brian Wansink. They can also play a bunch of things in YouTube if they want to within the Mindless Eating method there is way to tackle this and you can learn about that, you can review about that and the Book Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think much at all libraries, book stores, amazon.com, et cetera.
Curtis Ludlow: Great. Well, ladies and gentlemen, rush out and get your copy of Mindless Eating, the book. And Brian, thank you so much again for taking the time to tell us about your work. I really appreciate it.
Dr. Brian Wansink: Absolutely, I like that.
Curtis Ludlow: Okay, thank you. Take care now.
