Successful weight loss is far more complex than simply eating right and exercising. For many people, food-related emotional issues are a massive barrier to reaching and maintaining a healthy weight.
Functional Imagery Training (FIT) is a method rooted in several compelling bodies of research that seeks to address the underlying causes of emotionally charged cravings, overeating, and behaviors. It’s used to address a range of behaviors, including addiction to food.
To put it simply: FIT works to retrain habits of mental imagery, helping people break patterns of food addiction and cravings. One impressive study found participants in a six-month timeframe who used FIT lost nine pounds more than those who didn’t, with no additional diet or lifestyle guidance or recommendations.
FIT is an approach to behavior change based on two decades of research that encompasses three techniques into one unique intervention: mental imagery, motivational interviewing, and mental contrasting.
According to Dr. Linda Solbrig, the primary developer of FIT in the context of weight management, her intervention works in the following way when it comes to helping patients manage their weight:
“FIT is…designed to promote sustained behaviour change and address cravings. It trains the habitual use of affective, goal-directed mental imagery of personal incentives, using imagery to plan behaviours, anticipate obstacles, and mentally try out solutions from previous successes. Participants are taught to update their imagery from their experience, and to generalise their imagery skills to new goals.”[1]
Mental imagery focuses on an image's role in emotion and behavior. It relates to the Elaborated Intrusion Theory, which helps explain how intrusive thoughts can lead to cravings. Mental imagery has a strong emotional charge compared to other types of thinking. For example, mental imagery plays a huge role in drug cravings. Especially in individuals with addictive personality tendencies, these emotionally charged mental images can dominate daily thoughts.
Motivational interviewing is a technique used in many areas of behavior change. Essentially, the interviewer strikes a balance between asking questions that offer a valuable amount of guidance without pushing unsolicited advice.
Mental contrasting is an imagery technique where the individual envisions a future without a specific dysfunctional behavior, such as a drug or food addiction.
Primarily relevant to mental health practitioners, FIT is increasingly used by nutritionists and doctors to help their patients make diet and lifestyle changes. FIT is also used with athletes. No matter the audience, FIT can be a powerful tool that prompts lasting mindset shifts, motivating someone to make changes because they want to, not because they have to. FIT aims to tailor imagery exercises and personalized guidance to strengthen motivation and foster a desire for behavior change.
While many practitioners have likely been using a FIT approach intuitively for years, the more formalized modern-day intervention has helped providers understand why and how it works for weight loss.
One impressive study compared participants who received FIT versus others who only received motivational interviewing over six months. With no diet or lifestyle interventions, the group receiving FIT lost nine pounds more than the other group. These results are promising, as they suggest that FIT combined with diet and lifestyle counseling, such as exercise and sleep support, can be highly effective for weight management.[2]
To understand a real-life example, let’s look at the common occurrence of food cravings. Cravings are a cycle that starts with an intrusive thought, which emotionally-charged imagery associations that lead to triggers. For example, sitting on the couch watching television at 10 pm might always lead to craving for sugar or another particular food. This mental imagery can dominate thoughts and must be replaced by other, more positive imagery that leads to healthier habits.
Many health coaches, nutritionists, and integrative doctors already implement motivational interviewing techniques with their patients for behavior change. FIT takes this a step further by teaching people how to elicit and practice motivational imagery themselves, which can significantly help create sustained healthier habits. Practitioners of FIT help clients learn to cue their own imagery practice until it becomes an automatic habit.
Functional Imagery Training helps people imagine a life without the “bad” habits they want to break. Whether this is a regular food craving or sedentary behavior, they learn to imagine what a future looks like without those behaviors. For example, what would a future look like for yourself and your children ten years down the road if you make healthy choices today? What would that same future look like if you continued with unhealthy choices?
Functional Imagery Training allows people to imagine and emotionally connect with how great a future will be and feel at a healthy weight. Research proves its powerful effects on weight loss, which is why more coaches and practitioners are using it to break unhealthy diet and lifestyle habits and replace them with healthy ones.
Armen Nikogosian, MD practices functional and integrative medicine in Henderson, Nevada. He is Board Certified in Internal Medicine and a member of the Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM) and the Medical Academy of Pediatric Special Needs (MAPS).
www.southwestfunctionalmedicine.com
[1] footnote one here
[2] footnote two here