Do you believe your thinking can affect what you eat and how much you eat? Why not? What if I could prove to you that the reverse is also true, what and how much you eat can affect your thinking? This is exactly what was demonstrated over 70 years ago by the Minnesota Starvation Experiment. This week’s episode in the Weight Coach podcast is all about this. I’ll provide a link below if you have not subscribed to Weight Coach podcast yet so you can go listen all about the Minnesota Starvation Experiment. It is the documentation of this experiment that eating psychology is based on. There is no further published data for documented medical study in controlled conditions since this 1944 experiment. The study was done according to the ethical standards of the day, but would definitely not pass today’s ethical standards for medical study, so has never been repeated in our modern environment.

Indeed, the fact that the men in this study were eating fewer calories than they were burning created shocking psychological changes. Their thoughts changed dramatically. First, realize that they were eating more calories than today’s common diet programs. The men were eating 1,670 calories a day. When their weight was at its lowest (most of them down to just 115 to 105 pounds – all of them looked like concentration camp survivors) they did not think that they were “skinny.” In fact, they thought the normal-weight lab workers were fat. Many of them began to dream of cannibalism and some even entertained thoughts of cannibalism. The psychologists interviewing the men daily and documenting their findings said they became withdrawn, humorless, and possessive about their food. They were constantly having to apologize to each other for acting in ways they would not normally. They described their “difficult traits” came to the surface. There were a couple of extreme cases where the men were dismissed from the experiment. One cut off three of his own fingers. The other voiced a desire to kill the doctor heading up the experiment and then wanting to take his own life.

They were deprived not only of calories, but also of choice in their food. They were fed a diet consistent with what people were subsisting on in the war torn countries of Europe during WWII. In these conditions, their THINKING began to change. So if eating a certain way can alter your thinking, what would happen if you could CHOOSE the thoughts you want to focus on that could produce healthy changes in your food desires? I’ll tell what it will do – it will put you at peace with eating, finally. It will get you back in touch with your natural levels of hunger and eating instincts that you probably had intact as a little kid. Your body, as a result, will begin to normalize.

I’ll share with you that there were times in my past that I had myself on the Minnesota Starvation Experiment on steroids – eating less than 1200 calories a day, weighing and measuring every bite that went into my mouth, forcing myself to exercise for hours. It is any wonder that I had many backlashes similar to those 36 brave men who volunteered for the experiment back in the 1940s. No, I didn’t want to resort to cannibalism, but I sure experienced the constant, distorted hunger that they did once they were done with the experiment. Weight coaching is what helped me finally get back in touch with true appetite. This is what weight coaching can help you do. It sure beats putting yourself on the Minnesota Starvation Experiment.

Go listen to more about the Minnesota Starvation Experiment in Episode 6 of the Weight Coach:  Listen to Weight Coach Episode 6