According to a new study, people can fight their chocolate cravings by just imagining eating lots of it. In a country where people eat 11kg of chocolate a year, research findings suggest an effective way to resist the sugary fix.

BBC reports a research team from Trust Me, I'm a Doctor gathered 200 chocolate lovers at Merchant Adventurers Hall in York for a counter-intuitive experiment headed by Professor Carey Morewedge from Boston University.

The respondents were divided in two groups and each group was given a sweet mental task.

The first group was asked to imagine eating 30 chocolates, from feeding their mouths to chewing and savoring the taste. The second group was asked to do the same but with only three imaginary chocolate pieces.

Respondents were then asked to fill up questionnaires with bowls of chocolates served on their tables. Researchers found out that the group who ate 30 imaginary chocolates ate 37% less than the group who only imagined three.

"By the time I'd finished imagining the 30 pieces I really wasn't that bothered about eating lots of real chocolate. I normally can't leave an unfinished bar, but I can after this. I need to lose some weight - so I plan to try this approach with other foods, because it obviously worked for me," one respondent shared.

"That intuitively seems to make sense," said Professor Morewedge, "but when we try to avoid something or try to stop thinking about something, immediately you start thinking about that thing. I say 'don't think about a white bear' and you will start thinking about white bears."

In fact, the more people tend to suppress their thoughts, the more they activate them. Professor Morewedge added that instead of fighting the craving, people can just embrace the thought of actually eating chocolate.

This "habituation" method may also fight addictions in other pleasures such as tobacco and alcohol.