(tied with Intuitive Eating)
Neuroslim, along with its co-winner, intuitive eating, are the only weight loss approaches that recognize something researchers have known for years: Long-term weight loss is impossible without changing the eating habits that lead to overeating.
No diet is going to stop you from "distracted eating" (eating while watching TV or scrolling through your smartphone), unintentionally triggering hunger by say, leaving fattening food on the counters where you can see them, taking big bites instead of smaller ones, not paying attention to how full you're getting, and ignoring other internal signals critical to healthy hunger and satiety.
Neuroslim is our co-winner because it is completely devoted to changing the habits that lead to overeating, sugar and salt addictions and a loss of control caused by unmanageable cravings.
It also wins the top spot as our favorite weight loss plan because it doesn't just teach you how to weaken cravings for unhealthy food, but how to strengthen cravings for fruits and vegetables.
Unlike the typical diet plan for weight loss, Neuroslim is an online weight loss course that breaks negative eating patterns. All with techniques developed by neuroscientists and published in peer-reviewed science journals.
Like intuitive eating, it is not a diet-based approach to weight loss. There are no recommended foods to eat or avoid. Instead, it’s all about using science to wean yourself off sugar, snacking, overeating and more.
Where it veers from intuitive eating is that it is very prescriptive about what to do. Packed with easy-to-follow techniques like the “Pause-Rate-Decide” method of managing cravings, it aims to change how, not what, you eat.
Neuroslim founder Michael Alvear, inspired by a psychiatrist who used neuroscience techniques to stop his addiction to Oreos, spent years researching neuroscientific approaches to weight loss.
Instead of interviewing weight loss experts, he interviewed neuroscientists working on hunger and satiety-related subjects. They pointed him to a vast trove of research that included a number of useful insights and techniques into curbing hunger, breaking addictions to sugar, quitting sodas and juices, avoiding binge eating and more. Putting the more prominent studies together, he created the blueprint for what later became the online weight loss course called Neuroslim.
The online weight loss class is designed to help people lose weight in a healthy way by teaching them how to change their eating habits. Among its most foundational principles is the power of habituation--that small changes over time will lock in healthy eating habits.
By focusing on eating habits and patterns more than food choices,
Neuroslim, through an online weight loss class, offers the possibility of a holy grail: Losing weight without cutting out any food groups-- including unhealthy, processed food.
For example, through neuroscientific techniques, Neuroslim shows you how to be just as satisfied eating a 1/2 oz portion of potato chips as you currently may be eating a full-ounce bag.
It can also teach you something diets can't--how to want less food. It does this through hunger-lowering techniques neuroscientists discovered while researching the relationship between hunger and memory.
The online weight loss program's benefits mirror those of Intuitive Eating's: Not only improved physical health, but also mental well-being. Research shows that the techniques used in Neuroslim lead to healthy body weight, lower cholesterol and blood pressure, and better dietary intake overall. In addition, people using these techniques report higher levels of satisfaction with their bodies and less disordered eating behaviors.
Neuroslim's techniques help develop a healthier relationship with food by focusing on enjoying the experience of eating, rather than worrying about calories or dieting. This can help you appreciate food more and make better choices about what to eat. Some other benefits include increased self-esteem, body satisfaction, and a reduced likelihood of engaging in bingeing or purging behaviors.
There is no research on Neuroslim as a stand-alone weight loss program but there are hundreds of studying showing the effectiveness of the techniques used in the program.
That’s because Neuroslim is a collection of insights and techniques found in published, peer-reviewed neuroscience journals. Neuroslim’s genius isn’t that it invented or developed innovative techniques; it’s that it
promotes discoveries in advanced science journals few people know about.
Every lesson in the Neuroslim online weight loss course ends with a list of academic citations showing which neuroscientist developed the technique and what journals they were published in.
Click here to see over 200 of those studies.
Long-term studies on weight loss show that changing your eating habits over time (like not eating while you're watching tv or scrolling through your smartphone, taking smaller bites, having a system to manage cravings and paying attention to internal hunger and satiety cues) will help you lose more weight --and keep it off--than simply dieting.
That's because once you've established a new habit it can potentially last forever, while dieting has an extremely short shelf life.
Neuroslim is an online weight loss class made up of dozens of short videos, text, and audio. If the $299 price tag is too steep, you can also buy the book or audiobook it's based on.
Neuroslim is basically a program of habit formation built around the scientific principles of habituation and homeostasis: You make small changes, wait for the forces of homeostasis to help your body adapt to "the new normal", then make more small changes. Rinse, lather, repeat.
The essence of the program to make the changes gradual so that they become part of your regular routine.
There are a few downsides to making slow, gradual changes (establishing new eating habits) as opposed to big, abrupt ones (dieting). First, it can take longer to see results. This can be frustrating if you're trying to make a change quickly.
Second, slow, gradual changes can be harder to stick to because, at least initially, they require more self-control and discipline. It can be easy to get discouraged and give up if you're not seeing results quickly.
Finally, slow, gradual changes can be frustrating--sometimes it's easier to make a change when you have a specific goal in mind and a deadline to reach it. Without some patience, it can be easy to lose sight of your goal and get sidetracked.
More Information About Neuroslim
There are hundreds of studies showing that the techniques found in the online weight loss course Neuroslim are effective for weight loss. Here are a few:
ENVIRONMENTAL FOOD CUES AND THEIR EFFECT ON FOOD INTAKE
Suzanne Higgs, & Jason Thomas. (2016), Social influences on eating, Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, Volume 9, Pages 1-6, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2015.10.005
Quote: Norm matching involves processes such as synchronisation of eating actions, consumption monitoring and altered food preferences. There is emerging evidence that social eating norms may play a role in the development and maintenance of obesity.
Anita Jansen, Nicole Theunissen, Katrien Slechten, Chantal Nederkoorn, Brigitte Boon, Sandra Mulkens, & Anne Roefs, (2003), Overweight children overeat after exposure to food cues, Eating Behaviors, Volume 4, Issue 2, Pages 197-209, https://doi.org/10.1016/S1471-0153(03)00011-4
Quote: The data indeed show that overweight children do not regulate their food intake like normal-weight children do. Normal-weight children eat less after having eaten a preload and after intense exposure to the smell of tasty food, whereas the overweight children do not lessen their intake after confrontation with both food cues. They even eat marginally more after the intense exposure to the smell of tasty food.
Fedoroff, I. D., Polivy, J., & Herman, C. P. (1997). The effect of pre-exposure to food cues on the eating behavior of restrained and unrestrained eaters. Appetite, 28(1), 33-47. https://doi.org/10.1006/appe.1996.0057
Quote: These findings suggest that restrained eaters are more sensitive and reactive to food cues than are unrestrained eaters. The food cues appeared to generate an appetitive urge to eat in restrained eaters.
Coelho, J. S., Jansen, A., Roefs, A., & Nederkoorn, C. (2009). Eating behavior in response to food-cue exposure: examining the cue-reactivity and counteractive-control models. Psychology of addictive behaviors : journal of the Society of Psychologists in Addictive Behaviors, 23(1), 131–139. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013610
Quote: Participants with high weight-related concerns who attended to a food cue ate more than did both those with high weight-related concerns in the control condition and those with low weight-related concerns in the attended-cue condition.
SENSORY SPECIFIC SATIETY
Wilkinson, L. L., & Brunstrom, J. M. (2016). Sensory specific satiety: More than 'just' habituation?. Appetite, 103, 221–228. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2016.04.019
Quote: Broadly, they support an explanation of SSS based on habituation or stimulus specificity rather than top-down influences based on the availability of uneaten foods.
Raynor, H. A., & Epstein, L. H. (2001). Dietary variety, energy regulation, and obesity. Psychological Bulletin, 127(3), 325–341. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.127.3.325
Quote: Animal and human studies show that food consumption increases when there is more variety in a meal or diet and that greater dietary variety is associated with increased body weight and fat. A hypothesized mechanism for these findings is sensory-specific satiety
González, A., Recio, S. A., Sánchez, J., Gil, M., & de Brugada, I. (2018). Effect of exposure to similar flavours in sensory specific satiety: Implications for eating behaviour. Appetite, 127, 289–295. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2018.05.015
Quote: The results suggest that easy and continuous access to a high variety of similar unhealthy foods might have long-term effects on food consumption, and highlight a potential mechanism linking obesogenic environments with dietary habits.
Sashie Abeywickrema, Indrawati Oey, & Mei Peng, (2022), Sensory specific satiety or appetite? Investigating effects of retronasally-introduced aroma and taste cues on subsequent real-life snack intake, Food Quality and Preference, Volume 100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2022.104612
Quote: Our findings reveal that exposure to retronasally introduced vanilla aroma, and the sweet taste can induce daylong sensory-specific effects. Specifically, pre-exposure to sweet-associated aroma (i.e., vanillin) and taste (i.e., sucralose) stimuli decrease sensory-congruent (i.e., sweet), but increase sensory-incongruent (i.e., non-sweet) snack intake throughout the day. Overall, the study suggests that sensory exposure may have lasting temporal effects on eating behaviour
MEDITATION/MINDFULNESS IMPACT ON OVEREATING
Katterman, S. N., Kleinman, B. M., Hood, M. M., Nackers, L. M., & Corsica, J. A. (2014). Mindfulness meditation as an intervention for binge eating, emotional eating, and weight loss: a systematic review. Eating behaviors, 15(2), 197–204. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eatbeh.2014.01.005
Quote: Results suggest that mindfulness meditation effectively decreases binge eating and emotional eating in populations engaging in this behavior; evidence for its effect on weight is mixed.
Yu, J., Song, P., Zhang, Y., & Wei, Z. (2020). Effects of Mindfulness-Based Intervention on the Treatment of Problematic Eating Behaviors: A Systematic Review. Journal of alternative and complementary medicine (New York, N.Y.), 26(8), 666–679. https://doi.org/10.1089/acm.2019.0163
Quote: This systematic review advances the understanding of MBIs (mindfulness-based interventions) as a complementary approach for problematic eating behavior treatment. Despite the variable trial qualities and some small sample sizes, this study provides initial evidence supporting the efficacy of the application of MBIs to a range of problematic eating concerns. The application of MBIs remains a promising approach for the treatment of problematic eating and merits further investigations.
Wanden-Berghe, R. G., Sanz-Valero, J., & Wanden-Berghe, C. (2011). The application of mindfulness to eating disorders treatment: a systematic review. Eating disorders, 19(1), 34–48. https://doi.org/10.1080/10640266.2011.533604
Quote: Nonetheless, the current study found initial evidence supporting the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions to the treatment of eating disorders. The application of mindfulness-based interventions to the treatment of eating disorders remains a promising approach worthy of further research.
Hussain, M., Egan, H., Keyte, R., Strachan, R., Tahrani, A. A., & Mantzios, M. (2022). Exploring the association between self-compassion, mindfulness and mindful eating with eating behaviours amongst patients with obesity. Nutrition and health, 2601060221094671. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/02601060221094671
Quote: Whilst, self-compassion, mindfulness and mindful eating displayed a negative relationship with grazing and emotional eating, mindful eating also displayed a negative relationship with fat consumption and external eating.
Li, A. C., Wong, K. K., Chio, F. H., Mak, W. W., & Poon, L. W. (2022). Delivering Mindfulness-Based Interventions for Insomnia, Pain, and Dysfunctional Eating Through a Text Messaging App: Three Randomized Controlled Trials Investigating the Effectiveness and Mediating Mechanisms. Journal of medical Internet research, 24(5), e30073. https://doi.org/10.2196/30073
Quote: These 3 studies converged and provided empirical evidence that mindfulness-based interventions delivered through text messaging are effective in improving distress related to sleep, pain, and dysregulated eating
Mindfulness, dysfunctional beliefs and attitudes about sleep, pain catastrophizing, and reactivity to food cues were hypothesized to mediate the relationship between the intervention and outcomes.
Finkelstein-Fox, L., Gnall, K. E., & Park, C. L. (2020). Mindfulness moderates daily stress and comfort food snacking linkages: a multilevel examination. Journal of behavioral medicine, 43(6), 1062–1068. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-020-00164-z
Quote: Daily stress appraisals positively predicted comfort food eating at the between-, but not within-person, level. Mindfulness moderated these effects, such that only more mindful participants demonstrated a negative association between within-person stress and comfort food eating. Results illustrate that chronic stress exposure and acute stress reactivity relate differently to eating behavior. Mindfulness and chronic stress may be key intervention targets for non-clinical groups at risk for unhealthy eating.
If you're like most people, you probably think that going on a diet is the best way to lose weight. However, research has shown that developing new eating habits is actually more effective for long-term weight loss.
There are a few reasons why this is the case. First of all, diets tend to be restrictive, which can make them difficult to stick to over time.
Second, when you go on a diet, you often deprive yourself of certain foods that you enjoy. This can lead to feelings of deprivation and ultimately lead to binge eating or giving up on the diet altogether.
Third, most diets don't promote sustainable weight loss. You may lose a few pounds in the short term, but it's likely that you'll regain the weight as soon as you go back to your old eating habits.
On the other hand, developing new eating habits is a more effective way to lose weight and keep it off. This is because healthy eating habits are something you can stick to for the long term.
And since they're not restrictive, you won't feel deprived or like you're missing out on anything.
Additionally, developing new eating habits can help you lose weight in a healthy and sustainable way. This means that you're more likely to keep the weight off in the long run.
Most people, when they think of eating habits think of food choices--choosing an apple over a donut. But choice isn't the same thing as habit.
Habits are systems/approaches/patterns/behaviors, not choosing one food over another. Here are some GENERAL examples of what we mean by eating habits:
Eat mindfully.
Mindful eating means being present and paying attention to your food – how it looks, smells and tastes. When you eat mindfully, you’re more likely to savor your food and appreciate its flavor and texture. This can help you to feel more satisfied with smaller portions, and is a great way to prevent overeating.
Listen to your body.
Your body knows when it’s hungry and when it’s had enough to eat. Learning to listen to your hunger signals will help you to eat only when you’re truly hungry, and avoid eating out of boredom or stress.
Don’t deprive yourself.
If you deny yourself the foods you love, you’re more likely to end up overeating or binging later on. Deprivation can also lead to intense cravings that are hard to resist. Instead of completely eliminating your favorite foods, allow yourself to enjoy them in moderation.
Eat slowly and savor each bite.
Eating quickly can lead to overeating, as it takes time for your brain to register that you’re full. Slow down and take your time when you eat, savoring each bite. This will help you to feel satisfied with less food and prevent overeating.
Avoid distractions.
When you’re distracted while eating, such as watching TV or working on the computer, you’re more likely to eat mindlessly and overeat. Eating without distractions allows you to focus on your food and pay attention to your hunger signals, helping you to eat only when you’re truly hungry.
Make time for meals.
Scheduling regular mealtimes and taking the time to sit down and enjoy your meal can help you to eat more mindfully and avoid unhealthy snacking. When you make time for meals, it also allows you to focus on preparing healthy, nourishing food instead of grabbing something quick and unhealthy.
Avoid eating late at night.
Eating close to bedtime can lead to weight gain and disrupt your sleep. If you’re hungry late at night, try snacking on a light, healthy food like fruits or vegetables instead of heavier fare.
Plan ahead.
Meal planning and prepping can help you to eat healthier and avoid unhealthy snacking. Planning ahead also takes the guesswork out of meals, making it easier to stick to your healthy eating goals.
Neuroslim, the winner of our best weight loss program, has very specific views on eating habits. Here's a few:
The habit of unintentionally making yourself hungry
Food cue reactivity is the tendency for people to overeat in response to food cues, such as the sight or smell of food. This can be a problem for people who are trying to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight, as it can lead to overeating and weight gain.
There are several factors that may contribute to food cue reactivity, including hunger, cravings, and emotional eating. People who are more reactive to food cues may be more likely to overeat, especially in situations where they are exposed to high levels of food cues (such as an all-you-can-eat buffet).
Neuroslim uses evidence-based strategies that can help reduce food cue reactivity--by developing new habits to avoid it.
Forming a habit of pre-meal rituals
Research shows that rituals aid weight loss. Examples of pre-meal rituals include:
1. Washing hands: This is perhaps the most common pre-meal ritual. It is often done as a way to cleanse oneself before eating.
2. Saying grace: Many people say grace before meals as a way to give thanks for the food they are about to consume.
3. Lighting candles: Some people light candles before meals, either as part of a religious practice or simply as a way to create a more relaxing atmosphere.
4. Putting on music: Some people like to put on soothing music while they eat, as it can help them relax and enjoy their meal more fully.
Creating the habit of noticing your food.
Why would this be important for weight loss? The more you remember your last meal the less you'll eat at the next one.
This is technically known as the meal recall effect. Neuroscientists have long known that memory influences hunger and satiety. There are dozens of studies that show when people are asked to describe what they had for lunch they will feel less hunger for the next eating opportunity.
Neuroscientist have proven that recalling details of your last meal decreases hunger for the next one.
Therefore, developing the habit of noticing your food pays enormous dividends in terms of lowering your hunger levels.