How your food environment at home can affect your food choices:

What you actually have in your kitchen can massively impact your food choices and habits, which can end up making a weight loss journey far harder than it needs to be. The saliency of food can make a massive difference and having your cupboards filled with highly palatable foods only increases temptation.

Let me paint you a picture…you get home from a long stressful day at work and are completely shattered. This stress can have physiological effects on your brain causing you to have impaired inhibitions, leading to rash decisions. You’re starving so you open the fridge where a pizza is staring at you and it goes straight in the oven! While you wait you grab a large bag crisps and sit on the sofa in front of the TV.

You focus on the TV and wait for the pizza, without realising you have demolished the whole bag (around 750kcals from Kettle crisps). You eat the pizza (around 1000kcals from Co-op for example) and fancy something sweet. You’re getting pretty full now so you have a couple of rows of dairy milk (240kcals for a 45g bar). You probably feel pretty rough 

Before you know it, especially for a pretty average sized woman, you’ve just consumed pretty much your entire calorie allowance for the whole day in the evening and you’re pushing yourself a long way out of your calorie deficit.

Now I’m not saying any of these foods are bad by any means but when you’re eating them because they are just convenient, rather than you truly wanting them, these rash decisions are often followed by regret and can push your calorie balance in the opposing direction to your goals.

I never restrict my clients from eating anything, however I will educate them about mindful eating and how to make conscious decisions that are in line with your goals and NOT full of regret. It is important to include things in your diet that you do enjoy in moderation. Over restriction can often lead to binging which is something that I aim to help my clients avoid at all costs.

On the other hand there are certain foods that can be thought of as binge triggers and if this is the case then it can be beneficial to have them out of the house for a while or only buy them in single servings at a time.

To learn more about how your home environment can have an effect your diet, message me for details about joining my team.