Tweak Your Environment For Real Results

I'm a big believer in building a process, or practice, of nutrition. 

And an important part to building a successful nutrition process is based upon building new habits. 

One way to create new habits and move away from our default settings (which are always worse), is to evaluate your environment, then make changes to this environment that foster positive actions. 

ENVIRONMENT DRIVES BEHAVIOR! 

Actions need to align with goals, and our environment plays a major role in our ability to carry out these actions.

So what do I mean by environment? 

Environment can be as simple as having easily accessible Girl Scout cookies (Samoas, of course) in the cabinet, a few feet away from you, calling your name minute by minute. 

It could be the habit of "needing" a glass of wine or a dessert after dinner every night. 

Or, maybe it's a more complicated issue such as an unsupportive spouse. Maybe this isn't intentional, but is indirectly sabotaging the actions that should be aligning with your goals.

Here's a simple example of an environmental "hazard". 

If I get home from a stressful and tiring day and there are peanut M&Ms on the table and frozen chicken buried deep in the freezer, which do you think I'm heading toward? 

The obvious answer is the bowl of M&Ms, for two reasons. One, it takes less energy to consume the candy. (Don't kid yourself, we have an innate ability to choose the easiest route.). And two, and somewhat associated with #1, proximity to food is a major driver of our food choices. The closer a food is to us the greater the chance we will eat it. 

If I reverse these foods and the chicken is in the fridge, prepped and ready to go, whereas the M&Ms are in a different room (or better yet, at the gas station down the street), I'm more likely to go with the food that's easily accessible and closer to me. Even if I really don't feel like having chicken, It's how we're wired! I've just improved my odds of making a choice that aligns with my goals because my environment has changed.

I understand the example I gave has a fairly simple fix. 

There are more difficult situations, like the unsupportive spouse, that may take a difficult conversation to change your environment. 

Nonetheless, the first step of changing your environment to better suit your needs is to evaluate and be aware of the things around you that are barriers to success. 

Reduce or eliminate these barriers...increase your chances of success!

EAT WITH A PURPOSE … BE WELL!

Jaime Rothermich RD, CSSD, LD, CSCS
Functional Elements Training & Nutrition
functionalelements.net