Two Keys to Avoiding Temptations
It’s usually easier to avoid temptations than to resist them. The
best way to avoid food temptations is to clean up your environment. Another way
is to decide in advance what you will do in situations that normally tempt you.
Clean Up Your Personal Environment
There are many little things you can do to remove temptations from
your environment. Here are a few:
1. Keep junk food out of the house as much as possible.
2. If you must have junk food in your house, keep it out of sight.
3. Remove temptations from your space at work.
4. Start a grocery list of healthy food choices.
5. Designate an eating area and don’t eat anywhere else, then stay
out of the eating area as much as possible when it isn’t mealtime.
6. Avoid places where you will be tempted by unhealthy foods. This
may mean changing your route to work, the places you shop, or the aisles you walk
down in the grocery store.
7. Expose yourself to fewer commercials for unhealthy foods by watching less television.
Decide in Advance
Next time you walk by the candy jar on your
coworker ’s desk, are you going to take a sample? Don’t wait until you are in the
midst of temptation to decide. Decide now. Efforts at resisting temptation are
often undermined by rationalizing. (“Just one piece of candy won’t hurt. I’ve
been good all morning. I deserve a reward.”) When you have already made a firm
decision and rehearsed your response ahead of time, you can act quickly in a
tempting situation, leaving no time for rationalizing.
A temptation is a decision that has not yet been
made. Once you have truly decided that eating candy at work isn’t an option,
the candy jars will fade into the background and won’t be so tempting. Another
reason to make food decisions in advance is that the mere sight or smell of
highly palatable foods can bring on cravings that reduce your ability to think clearly
and make choices you won’t regret the next day.
Here are some examples of decisions you may want to make in
advance:
How many servings of sweets will you eat each day?
1. What will you do instead of eating when you feel stressed?
2. Will you snack while watching television or reading?
3. Will you snack at all? If so, when?
4. What will you eat?
5. How often will you buy junk food?
6. What will you do when offered a piece of candy or other unhealthy snack
between meals? Politely decline it? Accept it, but save it to eat with your
next meal?
Once you have made these
decisions, write them down, and put the list where you will see and notice it.
Review your decisions often. Your aim is to make your responses to previously
tempting situations automatic.
_____________
A temptation is a decision that has not
yet been made.
_____________
If you don’t always follow through with your
decisions, don’t beat yourself up over it. Nobody is perfect. Just keep up the
effort. You haven’t failed until you’ve given up. Every bit of improvement will
help you in your weight loss goals. It can also be helpful to decide what
you will eat for each meal a day in advance, and get as much of it
ready as you can ahead of time, before you get hungry.
Copyright ©Stan Spencer, PhD –Originally appeared in The Diet Dropout's Guide to Natural Weight Loss by Stan Spencer, PhD
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