The MOST Popular Diet: The "See Food-->Eat Food" Diet!

Odds are you have "normal" relationship with food, meaning that you tend to want to eat what is readily available to you. For whatever reasons, this is even truer for those of us with a history of dieting.

How we become overweight is the result of a complex mix of factors that tend to promote a higher energy balance, and therefor a higher body weight.

One of the key factors in this mix is our environment; specifically the number of opportunities to eat, and the type of foods that are most available or handy for us to eat.

The most important environment—our home—is also the only environment that we have much control over. A "clean environment" is one that is not loaded with foods that tend to provoke eating (especially eating in the absence of hunger). A clean environment supports the kind of healthy eating (i.e. snacking on an apple or banana) that supports a healthy body weight.

The strongest stimulus is when you can see food that is desirable to you, like warm cookies just taken out of the oven. But even having foods (that are desirable to you) behind closed doors has a stimulus effect (assuming you know they’re there). Take for instance a bag of potato chips (assuming they're a trigger food for you). Knowing the chips are there creates "decision anxiety." What this sounds like in your head is, "I want some potato chips. No! I don't want to eat the potato chips." And this "argument" goes on in your head until when? The most popular solution is to eat the potato chips (so that they stop bugging you!).

Cleaning up your environment so that it supports your healthy eating and weight goals is called stimulus control. Stimulus control means both adding healthy food choices to your environment as well as removing trigger foods that tend to provoke eating in the absence of hunger (or overeating).

Stimulus Control is one of 7 behavioral factors that are effective adjuncts to diet and exercise for weight loss.[i]

Some people figure out stimulus control on their own. They realize that if they don’t bring trigger foods into their home, they avoid the struggle that ensues which always ends with mindless-snacking, overeating, or even binging. They figure out that it’s much easier to leave the “trouble makers” at the store. In doing so they set themselves up for success, instead of failure.

All the best!
-Dorene

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Is there a question about weight loss or dieting that you want answered? Comment here, or email me at dorene@beyonddiets.com.

If this is the kind of information you appreciate, you may also like my book: The NEW Healthy Eating & Weight Management Guide.

See: White Knuckles and Willpower for more background information on stimulus control.

[i] National Institutes of Health. Clinical Guidelines on the Identification, evaluation and Treatment of Overweight and Obesity in Adults. Bethesda (MD): June 1998.