CASS Fitness

Keeping junk food out of sight is a powerful psychological tool for building healthier habits. By removing tempting snacks from your immediate environment, you bypass visual triggers and convenience-based snacking, preventing impulsive eating and making it easier to naturally control cravings. I tell this to my clients and most of them immediately saw success within a week if they implemented this strategy.

I’ve been using this strategy for over 15 years with great success.

Here is a breakdown of why this simple strategy is so effective and how you can use it to your advantage:

The Psychology Behind “Out of Sight, Out of Mind”

* Environment over Willpower: Most people believe they lack discipline when they overeat, but psychology shows it’s often an exposure problem. If snacks are always visible, you will eat them not because of a lack of control, but because your brain is wired for convenience. Often, many people just dive into a bag of chips and have no idea how much they just ate.

* Visual Triggers: Humans eat with their eyes first. The sight of a candy bar or chips acts as a bright neon sign to your brain’s reward center, which spikes dopamine and creates an instant urge to eat. The rewarding feeling quickly goes away, and often there is regret and/or a downward spiral that leads to continuous unhealthy eating since some people have a dangerous “all or nothing” attitude.

* Reduced Effort: When you increase the “inconvenience” of eating junk food by having to walk to the store or dig into the back of a high pantry, you add a pause to your decision-making, significantly decreasing the likelihood of consumption. I’ve done this with candy and every year when I buy Girl Scout cookies. They go way in the back of the freezer buried under the frozen vegetables. One of my friends visited for a weekend and he asked “Where are your chips?” I said “Giant”. He said, “What do you mean?”. I said we can buy them at Giant and you can take them with you when you head home!”.

Mindless eating is a big reason weight loss goals become hard to reach.

A little here, a little there sounds innocent…then half a big bag of chips later, you realize how much you actually ate.

I’ve seen this with some clients. I’ve seen this with friends. I’ve done this. Most of us have done this at some point.

Often, when we’re talking to people at an event and grabbing everything in front of us, we forget how much we’ve eaten.

This happens a lot when people watch sports or movies too.

Here are a few tips to help!

* Out of sight, out of mind: Store indulgent snacks in hard-to-reach cupboards or opaque containers.

* The plate rule: Never eat straight from a bag or box. Serve all snacks in small bowls or on salad plates.

* Increase the work: Choose snacks that require preparation (e.g., peeling oranges, shelling nuts) to force a conscious decision to eat.

What have been challenges you’ve encountered with mindless eating in the past?

Having meal prepped items and/or healthy snacks available at work can help you curb some of the common things we hear that pop up at workplaces:

Someone always brings in baked goods

There is always pizza and pastries at meetings

My co-workers all want to go out to eat for lunch everyday

Thing stress me out so much!

I have a candy bowl at my desk and I just eat a little bit at a time

What are some of your biggest challenges when it comes to staying healthy at your workplace?

Some people tend to give up on weight loss or whatever goal they have after a couple weeks. You won’t magically lose the 50 lbs you put on over the course of a year or more.

It takes time and an actionable, sustainable plan to achieve that goal.

Sometimes creating 1-2 new good habits every couple weeks is the best way to go. Rarely does working on 50 good habits at once work as planned.

You may even beat yourself up if you achieve 49 out of 50 habits.

The all or nothing attitude rarely gets you results. You don’t have to eat healthy 100% of the time, and one unhealthy meal shouldn’t send you into a spiral where you give up because you ate that meal.

Your daily good habits you develop over time will be like brushing your teeth…well hopefully you brush your teeth!