6 Comments

I feel a bit less daft every time I read your posts. Thanks for introducing me to new old philosophers and authors.

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Could this technique work for reducing excess sugar and junk food consumption?

It's a battle I've long struggled with.

But the idea that in an attempt to stop eating junk food and sugar to excess I would need to actually eat lots of sugar and junk food just doesn't seem right or plausible to me.

I understand the idea and can see how it would be effective for insomnia, nail biting, picking your nose, worrying etc

To give up excess consumption of suga and carbs, can the answer really be to simply eat sugar and carbs to excess while thinking all the while that I must give up sugar and carbs?

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Perhaps somehow, although I don't think it would make sense just to eat lots of sugar and carbs, because that would be bad for your health. The problem there is that the behaviour isn't based on a simple repetitive movement like a tic that you could exhaust, although perhaps you could use the cognitive version on certain related thoughts or beliefs.

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Thanks. I think I'll try the cognitive version. Possibly by thinking repeatedly about how I will eat sweets or carbs but not actually eating them while simultaneously keeping in the back of my mind that I shouldn't eat them.

I'm hoping that eventually I'll get fed up constantly thinking about eating the sweet food and then stop thinking about eating it.

Then all going well I'll be able to stop wanting to eat sweets and carbs more easily and on demand.

Interesting.

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Also Victor Frankl mentioned similar technique called paradoxical intention in his book Mans Search for Meaning.

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Yes. I talked about that in the article.

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