This is hidden brain.
I'm Shankar Vedanta.
Millions of us try to lose weight every year.
We go on diets, read books, buy pills off the Internet.
Collectively, we spend billions of dollars trying to slim down.
And the truth is we might as well flush a lot of that money down the toilet.
All those workouts, challenges and temptations with thousands of diets out there, they've all chosen.
Jack was trying to teach me sugar equals pain.
Yes, I was miserable.
As they say in the infomercials, there must be a better way.
This week we're going to talk about psychological tricks we can play on ourselves to help us eat better and to follow through on our best intentions.
My name is Adam Brumberg.
I am the deputy director of the Cornell Food and brand lab at Cornell University.
Adam Brumberg and his colleagues research food psychology and they find that many of our food choices aren't really conscious choices.
The majority of your food decisions are based on habit or convenience.
You know, habit being I did it yesterday, it worked out fine, I'm going to do it again.
And convenience, well, I'm sitting at my desk and there is a package of ring dings on the desk and so I'm just going to eat that instead of going and finding something that's healthier.
Once you understand these bad unconscious patterns, you could stay on guard, use willpower to fight them.
But theres also a smarter way you could turn the tables and get these unconscious habits to work for you.
Yeah, I mean, we like to say that the best diet is the one you dont know youre on.