I would personally recommend against training your body out of finding particular foods pleasurable. Instead, I would recommend exploring alternative food combinations that satiate the same craving.
I.e., expand your palette rather than restrict it.
Also, mindfulness meditation can be useful here. I have a reasonable amount of anecdotal evidence (p ~= 0.7) that a lot of overeating problems center around focussing on the oral aspects of digestion rather than the gastrointestinal.
Remember that your stomach has enough neurons to make an entire second brain—a small one, but a brain nonetheless. Like any neural network, it needs training, and focus and attention are the best way to access it.
Sometime, sit down with a healthy meal with a reasonable amount of nuanced flavors (my particular favorite would be a vegetable stir-fry). Sit down and begin eating, and pay VERY close attention to your body. Don’t just pay attention to tip-of-tongue flavors; focus on the feeling of chewing the food, focus on how it feels going down your esophagus, and ESPECIALLY focus on the feeling of the food hitting your stomach. After every bite, see if you can actually detect the different neurological changes occurring in your stomach nerves—see if you can actually feel the moments when your food starts making your stomach say “YES! MORE”, the moments when your stomach says “hold on, gimme a minute to digest that one”, and the moment when your stomach says “okay, that was enough”.
When you’re hungry, really EXPLORE the feeling of hunger, especially the particular churnings of your stomach and the particular bits of shakiness in your limbs, the specific WAY that your head feels light-headed. See if you can notice nuances between different kinds of ‘hunger’.
Once you can perceive nuances in your ‘hunger’ sensations, see if you can find associations between those sensations and your reactions to different kinds of food. Really, really explore this. See if the “butterflies in your stomach” are helped more by starches or by proteins. See if the “jittery distractedness” is helped more by simple sugars or complex sugars. See if the “gnawing emptiness” is helped more by rice or by potatoes.
After doing this for about a year, you’ll start noticing amazing things. You’ll stop being hungry! Instead, you’ll start noticing that you have cravings, the way a pregnant woman might. Instead of being hungry you’ll say “God, I need an orange right now.” And when you eat an orange, you’ll suddenly stop feeling the craving—because your body was never hungry, it just really needed some vitamin C, and stuffing yourself until the craving shut down was never a healthy solution.
The first time I found myself craving broccoli and spinach I nearly flipped out—I never really LIKED those foods, and yet I desperately needed some fresh broccoli to chew on. As soon as I went to the store, bought a crown, and scarfed it down, I instantly felt better—after only a few ounces of greens.
I would personally recommend against training your body out of finding particular foods pleasurable. Instead, I would recommend exploring alternative food combinations that satiate the same craving.
I.e., expand your palette rather than restrict it.
Also, mindfulness meditation can be useful here. I have a reasonable amount of anecdotal evidence (p ~= 0.7) that a lot of overeating problems center around focussing on the oral aspects of digestion rather than the gastrointestinal.
Remember that your stomach has enough neurons to make an entire second brain—a small one, but a brain nonetheless. Like any neural network, it needs training, and focus and attention are the best way to access it.
Sometime, sit down with a healthy meal with a reasonable amount of nuanced flavors (my particular favorite would be a vegetable stir-fry). Sit down and begin eating, and pay VERY close attention to your body. Don’t just pay attention to tip-of-tongue flavors; focus on the feeling of chewing the food, focus on how it feels going down your esophagus, and ESPECIALLY focus on the feeling of the food hitting your stomach. After every bite, see if you can actually detect the different neurological changes occurring in your stomach nerves—see if you can actually feel the moments when your food starts making your stomach say “YES! MORE”, the moments when your stomach says “hold on, gimme a minute to digest that one”, and the moment when your stomach says “okay, that was enough”.
When you’re hungry, really EXPLORE the feeling of hunger, especially the particular churnings of your stomach and the particular bits of shakiness in your limbs, the specific WAY that your head feels light-headed. See if you can notice nuances between different kinds of ‘hunger’.
Once you can perceive nuances in your ‘hunger’ sensations, see if you can find associations between those sensations and your reactions to different kinds of food. Really, really explore this. See if the “butterflies in your stomach” are helped more by starches or by proteins. See if the “jittery distractedness” is helped more by simple sugars or complex sugars. See if the “gnawing emptiness” is helped more by rice or by potatoes.
After doing this for about a year, you’ll start noticing amazing things. You’ll stop being hungry! Instead, you’ll start noticing that you have cravings, the way a pregnant woman might. Instead of being hungry you’ll say “God, I need an orange right now.” And when you eat an orange, you’ll suddenly stop feeling the craving—because your body was never hungry, it just really needed some vitamin C, and stuffing yourself until the craving shut down was never a healthy solution.
The first time I found myself craving broccoli and spinach I nearly flipped out—I never really LIKED those foods, and yet I desperately needed some fresh broccoli to chew on. As soon as I went to the store, bought a crown, and scarfed it down, I instantly felt better—after only a few ounces of greens.