Whiff Your Way To Weight Loss
July 17, 2022 Ashley 0 Comments
If you’ve ever skipped lunch at work and suddenly caught a whiff of somebody else’s, you know.
Smell has a massive effect on appetite.
And it’s strange.
A moment before you passed by their Pad Thai heating up in the microwave and releasing its enchanting scent, you weren’t even hungry. Food wasn’t even on your mind. You were busy and propelled by adrenaline and espresso. But now, after passing by Kimberly’s leftovers from last night’s homemade dinner, it’s literally all you can think about. Indeed – smell, taste, and hunger are all closely interrelated. Certain scents will inevitably make you hanker for a bite of whatever’s wafting your way. Anyone with a snorting organ and a stomach can tell you that. However, what may be lesser known information is that smell can also have the opposite effect. No, I don’t mean the obvious. (Like walking past a Bourbon street bar that still smells like regurgitated Tequila and street pizza from last night. No one wants to eat anything after smelling that.) Rather, there are actually very pleasant scents that can also curb your more peckish tendencies. For example, mint and vanilla are two big ones employed specifically for this purpose.
I never truly noticed the effect of scent on eating until I started a weekend ritual.
Before sitting down to dinner, I’d get all my cleaning done. Kitchen. Bathrooms. Laundry. Vacuuming. Then, after, I’d light a candle, take a shower, and make some food. Every time I do this, without fail, I eat less than when I don’t. Previously, I’d attributed it to consistency of cleanliness. (Like, by keeping my environment clean and organized, that would carryover to my dietary practices.) And, while this isn’t necessarily incorrect, the lighting of that fragrant wax tube may have been doing just as much – if not more – for my suppressed urge to eat beyond my fill. It makes sense (scents?), seeing that smell has anywhere from 40% to 80% of an affect on how ravenous you are. And research efforts have effectively confirmed this. For example, one study done for about two weeks on test subjects subjected to whiffs of peppermint noted a significant reduction in caloric intake – including those from saturated fat, total fat, and sugar. They also reported a lesser level of overall hunger during the experiment.
Which ties into the next point – the type of scent does matter. While vanilla and peppermint seem to be great for hunger reduction, what you’re hungering for should dictate what you huff. Example? If I have an insatiable sweet tooth and light up Yankee’s latest pumpkin pie spice candle, you can bet my next stop’s gonna be to Wegman’s bakery. (And the stop after that – the kitchen, where I devour the whole thing at the counter, using the serving knife as a spoon.) So, be mindful of that before you clear out the Glade plug in shelves. Can’t take a candle with you? Then maybe try the portable inhalant to enforce your diet – via the essential oils everyone’s been dismissing as hippie drivel for the past several years. And, if you despise peppermint, other scents will do the trick just as well. Other studies have shown that grapefruit, lemon, fennel, bergamot, cinnamon, and ginger are just as effective. If you’re interested, try out a couple scents before you decide on one. I made the mistake of choosing peppermint without thinking about how I only don’t hate the smell when I’m scrubbing my mouth bones with toothpaste. On the second go, I went with lemon which was far more favorable – something that reminded me of summer and sunshine. Any stress eating desires were eradicated as I reflected on donning sundresses, taking outdoor trail runs in lush green woods, and driving with the windows down.
So, if you’ve tried everything else, maybe whiff your way to weight loss next!