Adipose tissue? Rico's got that

Rico says it was the fact that it was a Carnegie-Mellon University study that attracted him to Henry Alford's article in The New York Times, not the notion of being able to eat more:

I have a belt of adipose tissue lodged around my middle. I’m a bumper car, protected from unwarranted bumping. Need a gently sloping shelf on which to display historical thimbles or wee porcelain Scotties? Call me. The Alford steaks, they are marbled.
My self-imposed limit is 165, the last station. Admittedly, at 5 feet 10 inches, I’m what any right-thinking nutritionist would call average size. But note that the number 165 is rendered in heterosexual pounds. In gay pounds, I’m Precious. So when I hit 170 this winter, I knew it was time to test-drive a Carnegie Mellon study I’d read about. Scientists there discovered that when you repeatedly imagine eating a certain food, your craving for that food (but not others) is reduced.
In one test, 51 people were divided into three groups. One group imagined eating 30 M&M’s; another, three M&M’s; the third, none. When a bowl of M&M’s was then presented to the group, those who had imagined eating the most ate the fewest.
The researchers chalked up the results to habituation: the manner in which the brain gets used to repeated experiences. In the same way that imagining a coral snake wrapping itself around your ankle might make you sweat, imagining eating food might have physiological effects: it may be releasing dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and satiety.
I decided to spend a month testing the study to see how much weight I could lose. I called my campaign Shelf Off. Relinquishing craving to arrive at detachment is one of Buddhism’s core tenets as set out in the Four Noble Truths; I wanted to be so noble that I inspired the use of the first person plural.
To maximize the challenge, I picked a month during which I would be vacationing in Paris and Berlin for eleven days. Throughout the month, my amount of exercise was roughly the same: three days a week, I devoted an hour or so to either swimming or brisk walking.
I have a 3:30 problem and I have a midnight problem. The 3:30 problem is cake. Or cookies or brownies, or anything in which the artful blending of flour and sugar works to sandbag the late-afternoon chasm into which might otherwise fall Sudoku or napping.
The midnight problem is based in occasional insomnia, and wants to be cosseted with gooey cheese. A tortilla, nicely browned on my gas range and then spackled with grated Gruyère, might feature here. As might a semi-catatonic face-plant into the arms of my Italian lover, Taleggio.
Restless in bed one night at 11:45, I visualized eating a Gruyère tortilla, mentally cataloging the manifold charms at the intersection of crispy and gooey. According to the Carnegie Mellon study, you have to imagine consuming the food, not merely the food itself; as the imaginary tortilla slid down my throat, I actually swallowed. I had four such bites. Then I ran into the kitchen and ate the real thing in a near frenzy.
I had better luck two nights later when my boyfriend offered me a slice of orange-flavored poundcake. “I’d like an imaginary slice, please,” I said. Greg flashed me his Art Appreciation smile, as if I had invited him to an evening of modern dance performed by people over fifty. I then proceeded to pantomime eating a slice of cake, using an actual fork and plate. We both tittered nervously. Greg said: “This is kind of weirding me out.” Me, too. Additionally, the taste of the fork’s metal tines called to mind a Dorothea Lange photograph. However: calorie bullet dodged.
Over the next few days, without any props, I imagined away a few more cravings and desserts. I had to gulp, or the imagining wouldn’t “take”. Did a food dragon I thought I’d slain ever present itself a second time? No. But I’m lucky: I’m a serial craver.
At the start of the month, I weighed 168.8 pounds. I was down a pound when we left for Paris. Oh, Paris: land of huge meals and tiny elevators! I was no more going to diet in this city than I was to set myself aflame. The effort that goes into French food stopped me dead in my tracks: copious amounts of pastry had been puffed, islands had been floated. By Day Four of the trip, I had eaten carrot macarons, rosemary macarons, rose petals, pain au chocolat, pigeon, beef cheeks, rhubarb sabayon, potatoes and pork loin roasted on a bed of bay leaves, and enough baguettes to fill all the umbrella stands in Seattle. By Day Five, I was perspiring cheese.
On arrival in Berlin, I vowed to stem the tide, no matter the social awkwardness; picture if you might my German friend Nils’s scientific expression on seeing my half-emptied plate of trout amandine at the biergarten Prater. “So,” he said, diagnostically eyeing the four glistening, parsley-flecked orbs I’d left on my plate, “I guess you imagined those potatoes?” Indeed, I had. The next day I walked for five hours.
My weight on return was 165.3. I had two weeks to get serious. I made an executive decision: no alcohol, no carbs. Also, heretofore I had mostly been imagining away desserts and snacks; but now I started to imagine whole meals, replacing every second or third with a piece of fruit or a glass of juice. The important leap I made here was to start imagining that a low-calorie food I was eating was a more delightful high-calorie food.
Bananas were my friends. My very, very good friends. I could parlay their cottony, sweet softness into either of my nemeses, baked goods or cheese. I passed off mango juice as ice cream or cheesecake; I sold the mushiness of blueberries as lasagna or brownies. Chamomile tea = butterscotch pudding. Seltzer on ice = gin and tonic.
Some foods were too distinctive to be perceived as much else: it would require an ocean-size amount of indulgence from me to imagine that fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice, even when placed in a wine tumbler, was anything but. Typically a successful gastro-transliteration required a close match in textures. But one day, I sat at my desk sipping a bowl of chicken broth, thoroughly convinced it was penne with sausage. Abbondanza.
The pounds started evanescing; usually, about a half-pound a day. These results did much to reward the agonizing tedium of the process. Granted, there had been a lot of good along the way. I loved figuring out which low-calorie foods could be passed off as their more luxurious brethren. Telling friends about my strange diet had several times broken the ice at gatherings.
But eating a banana at midnight while telling yourself it’s melted cheese is one of the more abject forms of entertainment I know. It’s No, No, Nanette without the songs, in a black box theater. It’s a Mennonite music video.
Worse, I’d started involuntarily imagining baked goods wherever I went. The dirt in a houseplant looked like the dark netherland of a dense, oily carrot cake; the floral pattern on a friend’s couch was a patent celebration of prosciutto bread. One day I saw a roundish, disheveled tourist family disembark at Grand Central, and thought, “The Bagel family arrives in New York.”
By month’s end, I’d lost 10.2 pounds. Catching sight of myself in the mirror on Day 31, I looked for the eight thousandth time at my love handles. There was still some slope there. I wondered if that is simply how the 49-year-old male body looks. I peered at myself from as many angles as possible. Were they smaller? Were they?
Why, yes, I finally decided. Yes, I imagine they are.

Rico says 'a Mennonite music video' definitely needs to be made. Biut if imagining eating foods works, Rico's got his work cut out for him, imaging steaks and baked potatoes and lima beans and peach ice cream...