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[Heidi 555]

I was perusing Seth's blog today and came across what I thought was a brilliant suggestion by Timothy Beneke.  Check it out.  (I couldn't find any posts about it on the forum.  If someone knows if there's a thread where this has been tried and discussed, let me know.)

Seth's post was on Science in Action: Flavor-Calorie Learning (simple example): http://www.blog.sethroberts.net/2007/06/01/science-in-action-flavor-calorie-learning-simple-example/  

Timothy Beneke Says:
June 1st, 2007 at 2:55 pm

Next, try swishing it around in your mouth and spitting it out, and keep assessing for taste pleasure; see if it has a deconditioning effect as one would predict.  My experience with “enlightened tasting” where I let myself taste but not swallow junk food that I’m attracted to suggests that by the third day, the flavor will be negative again… 

I'm going to try this out.  At the moment, I'm having such nice AS that I'm not having any junk food cravings.  But perhaps I'll experiment with it anyhow.  I wanted an easy way to eliminate ditto food cravings, and this might be it!  I'm curious if it works, and how long the effects last.  If you eat the food again, do the cravings come back?  Would this work for alcohol addiction?

[mpq]

I think alcohol addiction would be different. I have a very dear friend battling this at this time, and alcohol for him is not a "want"it is a very intense "need". I can't imagine him tasting and not swallowing.

[Heidi 555]

Perhaps, I should have written alcohol craving.  I was thinking of those on this forum who crave a drink.

"Enlightened Spitting" is a good name for this.  Lol.  I just had my first "dose" of peanut butter that I swished around and spat out.  I have to confess that I feel very skeptical about this working.  But I guess I am curious enough to give it a try.  I am observing a 2 hour window around my enlightened spit.  I also will avoid eating peanut butter for the next few days.  So far, my initial taste has stimulated a bit of craving...

[Heidi 555]

Wow!  I see why Tim named it “Enlightened Tasting” because my experience (at least so far) IS enlightening.  (My calling it “Enlightened Spitting” was meant humorously – no disrespect intended.)

Day 1: I craved peanut butter after my taste and spit.  Then my first nose clipped meal of the day, which has been extremely healthy, was not healthy at all in comparison.  That one taste was powerful, inducing me to eat relatively unhealthy nose clipped food.  Ditto for the snack, which followed.  It was a bit of spiraling out of control, compared to what has become the norm for me.  (I say bit because it was all done with nose clips.)

Day 2: Had my enlightened taste, it still tasted good, but then nothing.  Nothing!  No craving, just nothing!  I couldn’t believe it.  So I took another enlightened taste.  This time peanut butter tasted interesting, not good, just interesting.  My first nose clipped meal of the day was back to the usual healthy.  I’m loving this experiment.  Can’t wait for tomorrow and my next enlightened taste.  Thanks Tim where ever you are.  So far your suggestion is proving to be fantastic.

[Seth Roberts]

Fascinating! This is great info to have. Please keep posting about this.

[Heidi 555]

I’ve been conducting this experiment in the morning, at a time when I am hungry, but not yet ready to eat.  Today, when I got the jar of peanut butter, I noticed I was a bit repulsed by the idea of tasting it.  I was hungry enough that I would have been happy to eat or taste things, but my body was going ughh to peanut butter.  I repeated the tasting multiple times today to see if it would change.  Each taste was consistently neutral.  I actually had a hard time focusing on the taste, which was one of the reasons I kept repeating it.  The peanut butter didn’t taste bad, but it was so neutral tasting that it was hard to notice it.  Also, the tasting seemed to suppress my appetite.  I no longer felt hungry immediately after my tastes, and now my hunger has come back but seems to be less.  What a difference from a mere few days ago!

Thanks Seth for your encouragement.  I’ve been amazed at the impact and resulting body awareness and self-knowledge resulting from this very simple experiment.  It’s been a simple, refreshing and yet mind boggling discovery. 

I’ve been aware of flavor learning when trying new foods.  Typically, the first taste is interesting or even not good, and it takes about 3 or 4 exposures to really like or crave a new food.  I remember when a friend of mine was introducing her infant to new foods, she told me that it was important to try a new food at least 3 times.  She somehow knew (perhaps from reading a book) that it sometimes took 3 tries, for an infant to acquire a taste for the food.

The hardest part about this experiment is that I have so many more things I want to try, and yet I don’t want to confuse what I’m doing, by adding more variables.  I want to try this with different foods.  Also, I want to try it with different time frames.  Does it work if you only wait hours between tastes?  What happens if you wait many days between tastes?  What will happen when I eat peanut butter again?  Will my body immediately or progressively revert back to its old associations?  Seems like there’s so much potential in this experiment for ways to treat food and possibly other addictions.

[Heidi 555]

I was more hungry than usual, when I did my peanut butter taste this morning.  I was thinking I’d have a meal several hours earlier than I usually do.  After my taste, my hunger lessened.  It’s still there, but very much less.  It’s surreal to me that one teeny taste can have such a strong effect on appetite. 

I’m also feeling stressed today.  My car broke down, and I’m really nervous about driving it to the mechanic, because burning rubber or some kind of smoke is coming out from under the hood. :shock:  Some old health issues are flaring up, and I’m not feeling well physically.  So these factors are influencing this experiment. 

My first taste seemed a bit yucky.  But was that because I’m expecting it to be that way?  Second taste seemed interesting, because I really tried to focus it on it.  Third taste, I don’t know, I just couldn’t figure it out.  The truth is that I didn’t really care what peanut butter tasted like!  Perhaps, that is valuable information for this experiment.  But it might be just because of stress.  I’m also not sure if I might be swallowing small amounts of peanut butter that get mixed into my saliva.  I’m really bored with tasting peanut butter.  I want to move onto tasting another food, but mentally thinking it would be good for the experiment if I stuck with the peanut butter a little longer.

[Heidi 555]

First taste seemed slightly yucky.  It was very hard to actually taste the peanut butter after that.  It was almost as if my mouth went numb.  I rinsed my mouth out with water and tried again.  So neutral it's hard to taste it.  I wasn't hungry this morning due to a nose clipped snacking binge last night.  So I can't assess if it influenced hunger. 

I did have a craving for peanut butter late in the day yesterday.  That surprised me, but so did the nose clipped binge.  I satisfied the peanut butter craving by eating nose clipped almond butter mixed with milk and honey.

[Heidi 555]

The taste is still neutral to slightly unpleasant.  Later on today I will eat and taste a small amount of peanut butter, and see how that changes things.

[Heidi 555]

Yesterday, I ate a small amount (perhaps a teaspoon or 2) of peanut butter.  I didn't eat it very mindfully, but I also didn't notice it tasting any different than usual.  (The peanut butter I ate was a different brand.  I was at work when I ate it.)

This morning's enlightened taste was definitely not unpleasant, and seemed to be interesting to slightly pleasant.  The taste seemed to decrease my hunger. 

This is all very subtle and subjective, so I'm having a hard time fully trusting the results, especially when they conform to what I'd expect.  I think I might eat another bite of peanut butter today.  We'll see what happens tomorrow.  I'm starting to question the usefulness of this experiment, but somehow still feel committed to it.  A mind is a vacillating thing.

[Stephen M (Ethesis)]

The taste is still neutral to slightly unpleasant.  Later on today I will eat and taste a small amount of peanut butter, and see how that changes things.

I did this by accident with donuts.  The first 2-3 times I thought I was going to eat a donut the AS was so strong from SLD that I just spit it out.  Now, I find that donuts don't taste good to me.  I hadn't given it much thought until I read this series of posts and comments and blog comments.

Not a big loss, but nice to understand.  I think I will try it with other things as well.

[Heidi 555]

Thanks Stephen for your comments.  It was helpful to get your feedback as I'm floundering with this experiment at the moment.  (On an entirely different subject, some time ago I read your story about the loss of your daughters.  It stayed with me, haunting me in a powerful way.  I don't know how you survived.  You and your wife must be very strong.  Life doesn't give us much choice in what we have to endure.)

Yesterday, I didn't eat any peanut butter as planned.  (Hard day at work that spiraled down from there.)

Today's taste: I noticed I was really looking forward to it, as I took out the jar.  I think I was anticipating the appetite suppressant effects.  So the taste started off interesting (perhaps even slightly pleasant) but went to slightly unpleasant by the end of the first taste.  My second taste was the same: started off good but turned not so pleasant.  I'm thinking that it was my anticipation that created this changing taste effect.

[Heidi 555]

Yesterday, I ate a small spoonful or two of peanut butter, in the afternoon when I was hungry.  The peanut butter tasted slightly unpleasant, and seemed to make me more hungry.  Just tasting the peanut butter, or eating it with noseclips suppresses my hunger.  Since I still want to lose a bit more weight, I’m reluctant to do things that stimulate food cravings, which is a bit of an obstacle.  I like the appetite suppressive effects of enlightened tasting.  I thought it might be good to find a few more foods to taste and spit, but the ditto foods I wanted to try, weren’t good for a variety of reasons.

Then this morning I woke up with inspiration and direction.  This often happens to me: my subconscious provides me with the answer or next step, to a solution or problem.  (There’s this interesting book called Sleep Thinking by Eric Maisel.  He suggests a series of steps to encourage sleep thinking, but sleep thinking works for me without doing a lot of elaborate steps.  I just have to pay attention and wake up slowly, lingering in the in between state, which is so nice to do.) 

Anyhow, I woke up knowing that this apple juice that I have in my freezer, was the next thing to try.  A neighbor of ours has this old-fashioned cider press.  He really gets into making different flavors of cider and alcoholic beverages.  He raved about the apples of this one really old apple tree.  My husband had the brilliant idea of juicing them in our juicer. (I collect and eat different wild apples, but these apples weren’t good eating ones – too mealy.  But they are a great taste and spit!)  Anyhow, the juice from them was the best juice I ever had, so flavorful with lots of different tones. 

I woke up inspired to use “enlightened tasting” or “taste and spit” as a new AS component of SLD – an easy way to have more CFF.  This juice was the perfect thing to use because the taste of it is so incredible.  Also, I most tend to crave juicy fruity things on SLD.

So my first tastes and spits were wonderful and successful.  I think that they were more satisfying than drinking the juice.  I took delight in flavor, without calories.  My body craves this flavor, but maybe doesn’t need the calories from it.  As I said on another thread: “I've been trying to sort out whether my body is craving the flavor or the thing. Usually, my craving gets satisfied when I nose clip and eat the thing I'm craving. Sometimes, (unfortunately) my craving moves onto something else. When I crave something sweet, juicy, and fruity I notice that I really prefer to taste it. So I try not to nose clip clementines, etc.”  So now I'll work with tasting and spitting things that seem to be flavor cravings.  Oh no, another weird behavior, as if nose clips wasn't weird enough...

[losing-it]

Heidi, your post is fascinating on different levels. The sleep thinking you practice (I've not been as successful as you in "inviting" or encouraging it to happen, especially waiting for answers during in-between waking times; but sometimes, inspirations come to me in the pre-sleep time. Actual hypnogogic states usually seem to be too abstract to interpret any solutions or ideas.

Lucky you to have a cider-making neighbor. The best apple cider I ever tasted was at the Stephenson's Apple Farm restaurant in Kansas City. It was so incredible I called to see if I might be able to have some shipped, after we moved to Florida. However, there are no preservatives used, and they bottle only in glass, so shipment wasn't an option for them. I've never had really good apple cider since. But we have great orange juice and key limes here -- I have a couple of key lime trees in the yard. It sort of makes up for the lack of great, fresh apple cider. I crave fruits, especially on SLD or when doing a fat fast. Yesterday I broke my short fat fast and had fruit...and even while on it, I usually slip in a slice or two of apple or mandarin oranges or clementines because of the longing for their tastes.

I've been following your taste and spit experiments and they are also interesting.

[Heidi 555]

I did a few more tastes and spit, since my last post.  I tasted and spit a black walnut and more of that great apple juice.  Then I was not hungry, and ate much later that I usually do.  I'm going to taste and spit later today when I get hungry again, and see what happens.  I think I'll refer to this offshoot of Tim's idea as "taste and spit" or TAS.  And refer to Tim's original idea of deconditioning ditto cravings as "enlightened tasting" or ET.  At the moment, I'm very enthusiastic about TAS.  We'll see how it goes.

Losing-it, we are very fortunate to live in a village where our neighbors and us are into these old-fashioned kinds of things: bee keeping, cider pressing, berries, nuts, wild fruits, wild mushrooms, etc.  We inspire and share with each other things like persimmon pudding, quince pie, black cherry puree, and black walnut cookies.  My mouth is watering like crazy just thinking about these treats.

I agree that hypnogogic states tend to be too abstract, but answers and inspiration come to me most during the just waking up time.  There was a famous person who use to solve problems by dosing off, while sitting with balls in his hands.  The balls would drop and wake him, and he would have his solution/inspiration.  I don't fall asleep that easily, but this anecdote has stayed with me for a long time.  Lots of scientists have dreamed the solution to a complex problem that they've been grappling with.  I don't like to make an important decision unless I've slept on it.  Sleep brings new insight, clarity, and sometimes a change of heart or mind.