Visualize Your Way to Healthier Eating

MONTREALIndividuals who use visualization techniques borrowed from sports psychology actually can visualize their way to healthier eating, according to a study published in the journal Psychology and Health. The findings suggest people who made a concrete plan to eat more fruit and visualized doing so doubled their fruit consumption over a 1-week period.

Researchers at McGill University asked 177 students to set a goal of eating more fruit for a period of seven days. All the students in the study consumed more fruit over the course of the week than they had before hand. Those who made a concrete plan, wrote it down and visualized when, where and how they would buy, prepare and eat fruit increased their fruit consumption twice as much as those who simply set out to eat more fruit without visualizing and planning how they were going to do it.

According to the researches, the visualization techniques are borrowed from sports psychology where athletes mentally rehearse their performances before competing.

We thought having people mentally rehearse how they were going to buy and eat their fruit should make it more likely that they would actually do it. And this is exactly what happened," they said.