Creating a healthy weight-loss environment

Creating a healthy weight loss environment is critical for lasting weight loss. As Brian Wansink says, in Mindless Eating, “It’s easier to change your environment than your mind.”

Have you ever noticed how much your environment affects your success in life? How much better it feels and how much more work you are able to get done when your office and desk are organized? How much easier it is to get dressed in the morning when your clothes are clean, unwrinkled, and arranged in an organized closet?

Well, it’s the same with creating a healthy weight loss environment, an environment that supports your weight loss efforts, not sabotages them.

Healthy Kitchen

Through lots of trial and error, I’ve created a home and work environment that supports me and my desire to be happy and healthy. Here is a rundown of things I’ve done to create a healthy weight-loss environment.

CREATING A HEALTHY WEIGHT-LOSS ENVIRONMENT

• My kitchen is set up to make getting balanced healthy meals on the table easy and fun.
• The tools and ingredients I use all the time are easily accessible. Counters have free space for chopping and prepping.
• The pantry, refrigerator, and freezer are stocked with the healthy foods and ingredients I use frequently to make those quick easy dinner recipes.
• There are no candy or cookie jars in view.
• There’s frozen cookie dough in the freezer, but it takes enough planning to avoid impulsive munching.
• The only food in plain sight is a bowl of fresh fruit.
• Nuts and dark chocolate are tucked away in the pantry.
• My favorite healthy breakfast options are always on hand – sliced whole wheat bread, eggs, cottage cheese, peanut butter, high fiber whole grain cereal, oatmeal, bananas as well as plain yogurt, coconut milk, and frozen fruit for healthy smoothies. (I’ve also got a stash of healthy muffins and breakfast cookies in the freezer that can be warmed in minutes and hard-boiled eggs in the refrigerator.)
• There are salad ingredients and leftovers available for quick and easy lunches.
• My yoga mat is unrolled upstairs in the bedroom as a reminder to spend some time each day stretching, strengthening, and balancing.
• I have a golden retriever who makes sure I walk every day, which is much more effective for me than any gym or personal trainer could ever be because I love her and want to keep her happy and healthy too! (And I’ve discovered that the best form of exercise for losing weight and staying healthy is the kind you actually want to do.)

My Personal Trainer, Francie

This healthy weight loss environment makes it easy for me to stay on track.

It wasn’t always this way. For a long time, I tried to lose weight in an environment that did NOT support me. It had…

• 2 to 3 candy dishes filled with a variety of choices at all times.
• A cookie jar that was always filled with my favorites.
• A pantry brimming with potato chips, pretzels, corn chips, crackers, animal crackers, granola bars, cookies, and candy.
• A fridge and freezer overflowing with too much food, lots of it highly processed.
• Counters loaded with stuff making it difficult to free up space to cook when it was time to get dinner.

If you want to be happy, healthy, and slim but are living in an environment surrounded by all kinds of unhealthy tempting foods, in a kitchen not set up to be conducive to easy healthy meal preparation, it’s going to be a lot more difficult to succeed.

Make it easy on yourself. Create a healthy weight loss environment that is in alignment with what you want. Create an environment that allows you to succeed easily and effortlessly.