Dr. Alia Crum

And so I was at the Cheesecake Factory with my mother.

It was the end of the meal.

The plates were cleaned and cleared, and I was faced with this obvious but existential question.

Are you going to have dessert?

Yeah.

Am I going to order the cheesecake?

Okay, so you're with me here.

So anybody here who's struggled with their weight or diet knows that this is a stressful question.

And it's stressful because it's really a catch-22.

You're like faced with two bad options.

So on the one hand, you could let yourself go and have the cheesecake, right?

But if you're watching your weight, you're eating it with this sneaky sense of guilt and shame as you eat.

Or you could, you know, be virtuous and restrain.

But if you're like me, that would leave you leaving the whole experience like somewhat unsatisfied.

Like it is the cheesecake factory after all.

So here I was agonizing over that decision when the thought occurred to me, you know, what if our beliefs, what if my beliefs about this cheesecake could change my body's response to it?

And I thought, I hoped, I was like, maybe, like the placebo effect, if I just believed this cheesecake was good for me, that my body would respond as if it was good for me, right?

So that's where the idea for the milkshake study was born.

Oh.

Yeah.