This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanta.

Millions of us try to lose weight every year.

We go on diets, read books, buy pills off the internet.

Collectively, we spend billions of dollars trying to slim down.

And the truth is, we might as well flush a lot of that money down the toilet.

As they say in the infomercials, there must be a better way.

This week, we're going to talk about psychological tricks we can play on ourselves to help us eat better and to follow through on our best intentions.

My name is Adam Brumberg, I'm the Deputy Director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University.

Adam Brumberg and his colleagues research food psychology and they find that many of our food choices aren't really conscious choices.

The majority of your food decisions are based on habit or convenience. You know, habit being, I did it yesterday, worked out fine.

I'm going to do it again and convenience. Well, I'm sitting at my desk and there is a package of ring things on the desk and so I'm just going to eat that instead of going to find something that's healthier.

Once you understand these bad, unconscious patterns, you could stay on guard, use willpower to fight them.

But this is also a smarter way. You could turn the tables and get these unconscious habits to work for you.

Yeah, I mean, we like to say that the best diet is the one you don't know you're on. Our research shows you make about 200 food related decisions a day, which is a lot.

By food decisions, Adam doesn't just mean whether you eat a salad or a sandwich. It's also, how much salt do you put on your food?

Do you have a slice of cake when your coworker celebrates a birthday? Do you reward yourself for going to the gym with a cookie?

Here's one example of how you can turn the tables on your unconscious habits.

Adam and his colleagues find that volunteers and lab experiments make worse choices when they're stressed.

The stress out folks were more likely to buy a dessert or to select a fried item as opposed to the people asked to think of things they were grateful for.

They were more likely to get salad or grilled chicken or whatever it was.

Once you understand how stress shapes mindless eating, you can set up a system when you're not stressed that allows you to take advantage of this tendency.

If you pack a lunch the night before, you're definitely going to put together something that's a lot more helpful than if you are doing as you're running out of the house in the morning.

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