Dr. Alia Crum

And the other time point, we told them it was a sensible shake.

It was called the Sensa Shake.

It was light and fit.

It was 140 calories, low fat, low sugar.

This is sort of your diet shake.

Essentially, the labels were setting their minds.

The label either put them in the mindset of indulgent, you know, high caloric shake or the mindset of sensibility, somewhat of restraint, right?

A low fat option.

What we found was that their ghrelin response differed.

in response to simply changing the mindset.

And in particular, when they thought they were consuming the indulgent shake, their body's ghrelin levels dropped at a threefold rate compared to when they thought they were consuming a sensible shake.

So in essence, what this means is when they thought they were consuming indulgently, their bodies responded as if it had had more food.

What?

Well, it's not all that insane when you start to think about it, right?

The brain's whole job is to help

monitor the external environment, assess the internal environment, and use information from both of those things to keep us alive, keep us healthy.

And when the brain thinks, oh, you're not getting enough food, it says, keep hunger strong, keep metabolism low, because its job is to help us stay alive.

So it's surprising because

We have this kind of oversimplified assumption that a healthy weight is kind of calories in, calories out.

But it's really not that simple.