Dr. Alia Crum

Like, placebo effects, think you're healthy, you'll be healthy, you know?

But that was a far too simplistic way of thinking about it.

And in fact, it was the exact opposite.

When these participants thought they were eating sensibly, their bodies left them still feeling physiologically hungry, right?

Not satiated, which could potentially be corresponding to slower metabolism and so forth.

So if you're in the interest of maintaining or losing weight, what's the best mindset to be in?

It's to be in a mindset that you're eating indulgently, that you're having enough food, that you're getting enough.

And at least in that study, we showed that has a more adaptive effect on ghrelin responses.

It does matter what it is, and it matters what you think about that diet and what others around you and in our culture think about that diet because those social contexts inform our mindsets.

Our mindsets...

interact with our physiology in ways that produce outcomes that are really important so let's not get dualistic and say you know it's either all in the mind or not in the mind let's also not be unnecessarily combative and say oh it should be all plant-based or you know keto or whatever it's all of those things are a combined product of what you're actually doing and

And what you're thinking about, if you believe in it, if you don't, if you're skeptical or, you know, in some cases you think you should be eating a certain way and then you don't live up to that.

It might have an adverse effect because of the stress and the anxiety associated with that.

Well, it's also, and I would just say that, you know, the term that we use in our field is nocebo effect for that, which is sort of the placebo's ugly stepsister.

You know, it's when negative beliefs cause negative consequences.

So you are told you will have, you know, it's very well demonstrated that when people are told about certain side effects, they're far more likely to experience those side effects later.

Yeah, no, I think that this is a really good example of this phenomenon, right?

That the total effect of anything is a combined product of what you're doing and what you think about what you're doing.

And we found a group of people who were getting a lot of exercise.

but weren't aware of it, a group of hotel housekeepers.