Just start noticing how greasy they are, and how the grease gets all over your fingers and coats the inside of the bag. Notice that you don’t want to eat things soaked in that much grease. Become repulsed by it, and then you won’t like them either.’”
I tried using this on soda. I spent five minutes visualizing the fizz and sweetness of soda mixed with replayed emotions of disgust and aversion. That was half a year ago and since then, I’ve had one can of ginger soda. It was okay, but not great, and I haven’t had any temptation since then. Notably, there is at least one crate of soda in my house at all times, since my family still drinks it. Prior to the experiment I drank one or two cans a day.
I tried to repeat it with cheese and it only lasted a week or so before I had an overwhelming craving for Mac and cheese. Cheese is an integral part of almost everything I eat, so it’s not that surprising, and on reflection I didn’t really want to quit cheese like I wanted to quit soda. Still, if you had told me I could stop wanting to eat cheese for a week with five minutes of visualization, I would have laughed at you.
I haven’t attempted a third trial since there’s no other single thing I want to cut out of my diet. I briefly considered doing it on all food before deciding that’s probably a good way to induce an eating disorder.
I’d be interesting in hearing whether anyone else has tried soares aversion technique, and what the outcome was.
To an extent, I am intrinsically ambivalent about food, but over time (starting in childhood, actually) I have sort of unconsciously trained myself to be averse to sweetness—anything that is too sweet makes me think of rotting teeth full of cavities, and sugars being transformed into fat deposits, and all the energy in that sugar which some starving person could use more effectively than I, if only they had been the one to eat it instead—and it makes me less interested in eating the sweet thing. Oddly, this mostly shows up after I’ve already eaten it and makes me guilty without stopping me from eating it in the first place, though, because I don’t stop and think about that when the food is actually in front of me—hence why I have multiple cavities in my teeth!
I tried using this on soda. I spent five minutes visualizing the fizz and sweetness of soda mixed with replayed emotions of disgust and aversion. That was half a year ago and since then, I’ve had one can of ginger soda. It was okay, but not great, and I haven’t had any temptation since then. Notably, there is at least one crate of soda in my house at all times, since my family still drinks it. Prior to the experiment I drank one or two cans a day.
I tried to repeat it with cheese and it only lasted a week or so before I had an overwhelming craving for Mac and cheese. Cheese is an integral part of almost everything I eat, so it’s not that surprising, and on reflection I didn’t really want to quit cheese like I wanted to quit soda. Still, if you had told me I could stop wanting to eat cheese for a week with five minutes of visualization, I would have laughed at you.
I haven’t attempted a third trial since there’s no other single thing I want to cut out of my diet. I briefly considered doing it on all food before deciding that’s probably a good way to induce an eating disorder.
I’d be interesting in hearing whether anyone else has tried soares aversion technique, and what the outcome was.
To an extent, I am intrinsically ambivalent about food, but over time (starting in childhood, actually) I have sort of unconsciously trained myself to be averse to sweetness—anything that is too sweet makes me think of rotting teeth full of cavities, and sugars being transformed into fat deposits, and all the energy in that sugar which some starving person could use more effectively than I, if only they had been the one to eat it instead—and it makes me less interested in eating the sweet thing. Oddly, this mostly shows up after I’ve already eaten it and makes me guilty without stopping me from eating it in the first place, though, because I don’t stop and think about that when the food is actually in front of me—hence why I have multiple cavities in my teeth!