The Placebo Effect of Mindset

What if I told you that no matter what you how hard you trained for something, you would only truly benefit from the work if you THOUGHT you benefited from it? There is something to be said for developing and maintaining a healthier mindset towards work and the things we do every day to keep us healthy. Dr. Alia Crum did a lot of research into this and her most famous study was called "Mind over Milkshakes". Basically, participants in the study each consumed a 380-calorie milkshake after being told it was either a 620-calorie "indulgent" shake or a 140-calorie "sensible" shake. Her study measured ghrelin, which is a hormone in the gut that essentially tells the brain you are hungry, in the blood and found that the "mindset of indulgence produced a dramatically steeper decline in ghrelin after consuming the shake, whereas the mindset of sensibility produced a relatively flat ghrelin response. Participants' satiety was consistent with what they believed they were consuming rather than the actual nutritional value of what they consumed". The only thing about each shake was what the participants were taught, and thus what they then thought, they were consuming. Indeed, thinking you were consuming a lower calorie shake produced a higher feeling of hunger than a higher calorie shake.

What this then mean? The way we think about what we eat impacts satiable of the food itself. It can be further construed to say that what we think about "health vs. unhealthy" habits and lifestyles have an impact on whether or not we actually receive a physiological benefit from the effort. I find this particularly interesting in the context of my own struggle with eating. I have for years ate very little to maintain my body composition below what was probably ideal for the amount of activity I was preforming at the time. Despite this fact, I was always very hard on my body and the slightest change in body weight led me to restrict my diet even further. Contrast that to where I am today. The level of effort I am performing is much higher, yet I eat much more. I have gained a lot of weight but I feel a lot better because I am not restricting what I eat and I am measuring a large amount of progress in my powerlifting goals. What I am now trying to strive for is balance. I want to curtail my caloric intake and increase my endurance training in order to lose some of the fat I have gained. The loss of performance would not be ideal but I believe through a positive mindset about the goals I am attempting to achieve as well as a measurable goals and progress will allow me to find the right balance.

The temptation when switching up my nutritional intake would be to go "paleo" or something along those lines. While they did help maintain body composition for many years, the mindset I had prevented me from feeling good about myself. Conversely I have found that by not restricting what I eat, I have had a lot more satisfaction in my overall mood and mental health. However, I do believe I have taken it too far; indeed, there are objective standards of obesity and sugar intake that I have completely ignored. But the overall conclusion is the same: my mindset about what I eat, how I train and how I recover has to be in line with my overall goals.

In terms of a mindset towards eating, I will start to think of healthier options as indulgences. For example, me eating a lot of fish or veggies will be instead a "treat" to me rather than French fries or potato chips. Same with sweets. Instead of them being an every-day thing, it will be a reward for socializing with friends to go with them to get dessert but not prompting to go. Additionally, I will not restrict the amounts of veggies and fruits I consume; indeed, I already eat far too little of these for them to have any marked difference in my overall nutritional goals and thus even a marginal increase in these foods will far outweigh the risks.

In regards to fitness, I need to look at the effort in the middle as being rewarding. There is a lot of research that shows that the dopaminergic benefits one receives is exponentially increased by not focusing on the end state of an effort but instead the effort itself. In other words, focusing on squatting the fastest and best form I can produce in a single set will produce more benefits to me mentally and physically than focusing on completed all three or five sets. I have already incorporated this into my workout routine and have notice significant impacts in my mood and performance output during and after the workout. It also helps me to overcome the "flight" response I often encounter during lifting particularly heavy weight. I often feel a mild sense of panic just before I am about to squat any weight over 350 pounds for three reps, and I have noticed that if have a little inner dialog with myself beforehand to calm myself down and tell myself that I enjoy this effort because it feels good and makes me strong, I can indeed perform the repetitions. My next experiment is going to be with endurance work, which I have noticed I have a particularly hard time motivating myself to accomplish, but when I do, the mental state I am in elevates above where I was before the exercise.

The last area where mindset will help will be in my recovery. I do not focus on sleep as much as I should and routinely get less than seven hours of sleep, despite not really having a good reason not to get more hours. I usually like to watch TV in bed before I go to sleep and I have found that I don't cut this off often enough, which most likely has significant impacts not only in the length of my sleep but also the quality. So I ran a little experiment a few weeks ago: I got to sleep on time for at least eight hours a night every night and woke up consistently every morning. I did this for five days in a row. The result? My performance in the gym increased significantly (i.e. squatted my old 1RM for 5 sets of 3 reps) and my overall mood increased significantly (i.e. plenty of energy throughout the day and no noticeable depressive episodes).