Stop Being Influenced by Food Ads on TV
There is much in the news today about obesity and you can be assured that the food industry fully intends to place the blame squarely on the individual, despite the fact they spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year in an effort to entice us to buy more and more of their products. Children are especially vulnerable to the advertising for cereals, snack bars, crackers, cookies, candy, and fast foods. Colorful packaging, and now even colorful foods to encourage the little shoppers to badger their parents into buying the "convenient" snack packs for them. "Mommy I want it" is exactly the result advertisers are paying to obtain. If you live in modern society, you can't escape advertising. How many times have you been happily minding your own business when suddenly the TV screen flashes a big, juicy, something! Your stomach may start gurgling, your mouth starts watering, and the launch sequence for hunger has begun. Once the countdown starts, nothing can stop the launch into the kitchen, or for the seriously dedicated, out the door to go get something to eat. The ads are designed to do this, and they work well as we prove with our food dollars every day.
Count the Food Ads
Next time you watch TV keep a note pad nearby and make a little hash mark every time you see a commercial that encourages you to eat. You'll also notice there are certain ads that seem to trigger the hunger response more than others. What is it about those ads? Do you start to mentally taste the food? Does it remind you of happy occasions? Notice whether it is the people in the ad, the message itself, the words they use, even the background music or scenery? See if you can pin-point what, exactly, it is about the ad that draws you in. Evenings are an especially rough time for dieters because of the over abundance of advertising for food. Seeing delicious things to eat can create the sensation of hunger until it becomes a patterned response. Turning on the TV then begins to make you hungry, even without the food cues.
7 Ways to Combat Evening Snacking Habit
1. Mute the commercials or switch to another channel (channel surfers already do this anyway). Not watching or hearing the ad can help enormously. Remember, out of sight, out of mind.
2. Use commercial break time to do housework. 3. Mute the ads and keep your hands busy until your show comes back on with a project like knitting, reading or finishing that book you've been writing.
5. Step outside and breath some fresh air for a few minutes.
6. Exercise during the ads. It's a great leg exercise. Use a kitchen chair rather than the couch to be kinder on your knees.
7. Move to another seat in the room.
Be Willing to Experiment and You can Overcome the Allure of the Food Ads
The worst thing you can do is simply watch and then attempt to combat your growing desire to eat. Once the idea that you're hungry is planted, it becomes much more difficult to change your mind. Instead stop the idea from occurring in the first place by finding something else to do instead of watching another Burger King commercial.
Advertising only works when we're paying attention, either watching or listening. I've no quarrel with advertisers, I advertise my services too, but watching one hundred ads all featuring food after dinnertime is a bit much for anyone to endure. Food ads are designed for you to simply sit and be mesmerized by the flashing words, snappy slogans, colors and lights. Pay closer attention, or pay none at all, but either way you'll gain a much greater understanding of how advertising influences you.
~~ Kathryn Martyn, Master NLP Practitioner, EFT counselor, author of the free e-book: Changing Beliefs, Your First Step to Permanent Weight Loss, and owner of OneMoreBite-Weightloss.com
Get The Daily Bites: Inspirational Mini Lessons Using EFT and NLP for Ending the Struggle with Weight Loss.
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