If you ever had any doubts about the SAY WHAT YOU SEE strategy of granting children’s wishes in fantasy originated by Dr. Haim Ginott, here is a NY Times article by John Tierney that discusses something he calls the Imagine Diet for adults.

He says:

“The experiments at Carnegie Mellon are the first to show that habituation to food can occur simply by thinking about eating, according to Dr. Morewedge and his colleagues Young Eun Huh and Joachim Vosgerau.”

According to about.com, “habituation is a decrease in response to a stimulus after repeated presentations,” kind of like getting numb to something. The experiments showed that the desire for M&Ms and cubes of cheese dropped off after subjects visualized themselves eating just 30 of them.

Imagine that! Granting your food wishes in fantasy can help you eat less—just in time for the holidays!