Seriously? Tetris?
Yes, Tetris. Seriously.
(Don’t like Tetris? That’s OK—Angry Birds will work, too.)
I know it sounds crazy, but here’s why this is true:
Hunger cravings are often strongly visual.
Think about it this way: how many times have you been watching TV, feeling no hunger whatsoever…
When suddenly you see a Krispy Kreme donut commercial.
And somehow, seeing a huge, moist chocolate donut in slow motion makes your stomach grumble.
Thirty seconds ago you weren’t hungry at all. But now, all of a sudden, you want a freaking donut and you want it NOW.
What just happened there?
Hunger Cravings Are Often Visual
We humans are visual creatures. Out of all the 5 senses, we’ve come to trust sight more than any other.
Is it any surprise, then, that seeing food is enough to make us hungry?
It’s true.
I’m not just talking about commercials, either. For example, have you ever walked into the breakroom at work and seen a box of donuts sitting out on the table?
Same things happens.
You go from not hungry to craving a donut in 2 seconds flat.
Billboards on the highway… Print ads in a magazine… Watching a friend eat a cookie…
These are all visual cues that can elicit a powerful hunger response.
OK, So…Where Does Tetris Come In?
We’ve established that hunger cravings are often visual in nature. In other words, just seeing a food can make you crave it.
Luckily for us, this mechanism can also work in the other direction.
In other words, you can reduce the power of hunger cravings by occupying the visual part of your brain with something else!
Something…like Tetris.
A 2014 study showed that engaging in visual tasks, like playing Tetris, was enough to reduce hunger cravings and reduce the “vividness and frequency of craving imagery.”1
See, when you play a visual game like Tetris or Angry Birds, you’re creating a visuospatial working memory load.
In other words, you’re forcing the visual part of your brain to focus on something else (something other than food).
And that distraction is enough to reduce hunger cravings.
How Should You Use This Information?
It’s an interesting fact, but how should you use this information?
Like all weight loss tricks, it’s only useful if you can actually…you know…use it.
I would recommend finding a game on your cell phone that you enjoy.
Anytime you feel a hunger urge coming on, open the game and play for a few minutes. Chances are, by the time your game is over, the urge will have passed.
(Hunger urges and cravings do that, by the way. They come and go like waves. You won’t have to resist the urge forever. You just have to resist it for a few minutes until it goes away.)
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Sources:
1 Jessica Skorka-Brown, Jackie Andrade. Playing ‘Tetris’ reduces the strength, frequency and vividness of naturally occurring cravings. Appetite, Volume 76, 1 May 2014, Pages 161–165.