Dr. Alia Crum

And when I have cheesecake, if I really want it, I'll eat that in a mindset of indulgence too.

Yeah, and also, you know, the research is one thing, but I can say that this study alone changed my life.

Like that insight for me totally just, it changed everything, right?

And I can literally say I no longer struggle with eating.

I enjoy what I eat.

I feel good about what I eat.

And it's all because of this, you know, striving for this mindset of indulgence.

Yeah, the old setting was one that was focused on the behavior.

What am I doing, right?

It's all about, I shouldn't eat this, I should eat that.

And when you do that and you eat the thing you should, but not the thing you want, you put yourself into a mindset of restraint.

Like you're avoiding the thing you want, which leads to the setting of the mind of, I'm restraining myself.

I'm not getting what I really want.

And that mindset turns out to be unhealthy physiologically with respect to hunger signals and ghrelin.

The new mindset was, okay, sure, like still try to eat healthy, right?

Still try to eat nutritiously, say.

But the more important goal that I have is not focused on what I eat, but what mindset I'm in when I eat it.

So the goal whenever I go about a meal is to ask myself, what would it take here to eat in a mindset of indulgence, to enjoy whatever it is that I'm eating for the sake of the pleasure in that food?

And I would say that, you know, yeah, it is this tricky difference in indulgence.

Like, don't misunderstand it as, oh, this is licensing you to just like, you know,