Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Arrange Your Environment


This chapter starts out by talking about removing temptations...Where do you keep your snack food, on your kitchen counter, in your car, on your desk or locker at work??? Not a good place if you are trying to remove that temptation to grab when you aren't hungry.... Maybe a better place would be out of site. How about putting it in your freezer so it isn't staring back at you... , maybe on a high shelf, or maybe just don't buy as much and buy healthier things that you can keep in plain view...If you don't have the unhealthy stuff, can you eat it????

Changes at Home.
Open your cabinets and throw away everything and anything that could make you go off your new eating plan...They mentioned..you aren't wasting it, you would also be wasting it if you ate it anyway, since it is bad for you... (never thought of it that way)
Rearrange your dishes. Get rid of those large dishes and keep the smaller ones that makes it easier to really see the right portions of food. On a big plate you would think you have to eat more since it looks like you don't have much to eat...
If you don't live alone, try to get the rest of the family to help you by keeping junk food or things you wish not to eat, out of site...Explain you are trying to eat healthier and you would like them to help you...Explain to them it would be really nice if they also would choose to eat healthier(who couldn't benefit from that?)

Do creative problem solving.
This pertains to buying snacks in portion control pkgs. like the 100 calorie pkg.. You can ask your family to just buy what they want in a 1 portion, not a 6 pkg. of candy bars where they would have some left over and lead to temptation for you..

Changes at Work..
We all know that food around the work place is a common thing..Everyone is bringing in donuts, cookies, brownies, you name it and it will show up...How about all that Christmas Candy...Wow...what a temptation. Then you have all the vending machines. How about "Maggie" who just HAS to have someone try her new recipe for chocolate chip cookies?? Working in an office I bet you could gain 20# a year if you ate everything anyone brought in, piece by piece...Maybe you could have a little talk with a couple and explain you are trying to eat healthier, I bet they have all noticed by now. Decide if there is a place out of site that would be a good place to keep the food someone brought in for the day. How about a cabinet with a door on it and put a note where usually you put it, saying, 'chocolate chip cookies located at ?, Dawn made them for you all to enjoy. For that candy that is always in an open dish on the desks, how about a jar you can't see through. Get a few at the dollar store and pass them out to the ones that are near your desk...If you ask, I just bet you will get lots of them to be very helpful..maybe you will even get some buddies to change their eating habits, too.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Aimee,
OK, now I feel better. I've found your 'daily blog' that talks about your personal journey in this process. Think I'll keep posting here for a while until I decide to do something else ;).

My home if fairly diet-friendly. The only real change I needed to make was to remove the box of Wheat Thins from the table...
Then I got honest with myself.

My problem is not what is in sight, it's what I hide "just in case". In my drawer in my desk is 3 Musketeers. My sabotaging thoughts are 'I haven't started the diet phase yet, and this will be gone by then.' It's true, but still a sabatoge.

A pro-active change I will make today is to measure into serving sizes my cereal portions. Sometimes I eat cereal for breakfast, but usually for snacks. The box is too tempting to over-eat... sandwich bags are my friend.

Response: Hidden things are still visible. I am working towards a goal that is important to me. It's time for me to practice meeting my needs.