Conditioned overeating - do you agree with my insights.

By on April 22nd, 2009

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090421/ap_on_he_me/med_healthbeat_overeating

The latter article make a summation of the book being written by a Doctor who understands conditioned overeating from a real level. He claims to be an overeater himself, and owns many different sizes of clothing to cope with his up and down weight. He says that, on occassions like walking past a vending machine or food court, for some people, creates an almost irresistible urge to have something tasty.

I wish you would read the article, but I know that not everyone has time. but you get the general idea from my summary back there.

What I’ve found to be an awesome tool in overcoming the urge to eat something bad, is telling myself that I can have it in 5 minutes, but I MUST wait 5 minutes.
I work at McDonald’s, and sometimes I make the pies just for myself. And I was tempted to make some the other day, so much that I started getting out the pans. But then I had to attend to something and left the kitchen.
The very important part of this, for me to tell you, is that my sense of urgency for having a pie went WAY down when I thought that I was going to have one. Just preparing everything and getting ready to cook it, thinking that I WOULD have it, made those nagging, crave-thoughts go away.

Have you ever experienced this.
I think it’s a very useful thing to realize, because by the time I had finished what I had attended to, I simply forgot that I was going to make a pie, thus saving myself 250 calories (250 calories may not seem like much, but that basically equals an hour - the time it takes to burn 250 on the treadmill at medium speed, for my bodytype, anyway).
Perhaps some of you are more die-hard eaters and cannot be swayed until you have the treat in your hands. But try it sometime. Tell yourself that you can have what you want in 5 minutes. When the time is up, tell yourself it will only be another 5 minutes. Who knows, you may outlast the crave.

Everyone knows how and why people become obese, whether or not it’s due to overeating, but the missing link remains to be, ‘how do we control the craving brain.’
I think the aforementioned tactic will help some people.

Opinions/comments welcome.
Thanks in advance.