Archives August 2019

This week’s making peace with food tip is all about stacking the deck in your favour in the workplace.

But you can use this at home as well.

What do I mean?

As you sit there now, look about yourself.

What foods are in your line of vision?

Maybe they’re not just looking, but calling out to you…Eat me!

Think about the layout of your workplace or home.

Are there often tempting foods lying around?

What I encourage you to do is remove all the food from your line of sight.

Out of Sight, Out of Stomach

You probably know this already intuitively.

But recent research has shown that food within your line of vision is much more likely to be eaten.

Doesn’t it make total sense?!

It was shown in this study, in an office setting, when sweets were placed in a bowl with a clear lid, as opposed to an opaque lid – many more sweets were eaten.

Whether you’re at home or work, clear all of the tempting foods from sight.

It’s a super simple way of supporting yourself. Go do it now!

And stack the deck in your favour!

Have you noticed how zip-bustingly enormous portion sizes have become in the last decade?

It’s insane.

My husband arrived home yesterday with one my favourite treats – caramel slice – and I kid you not – it was the size of two iPhones pluses.

He showed me the receipt to prove that despite it being large enough to feed a small family, according to the till, it was one portion size!!!

So how can we continue to enjoy our favourite upsized foods, without upsizing our favourite jeans?

Your mother was right

It turns out, your mother was absolutely right when she insisted that you share your food.

But it’s not about being kind to others. It’s a way of being kind to yourself.

Sharing takes advantage of a very phenomenon called unit bias.

Sharing food takes advantage of an interesting phenomenon called Unit Bias.

Unit Bias is the tendency for individuals to want to complete a unit or the task.

What that means in English is if someone gives you a large slice of chocolate cake, you’re likely to eat the entire thing.

But if the serving size was 25% smaller, you’d still eat the cake without feeling deprived.

We just want to finish the portion.

So when you’re sharing for your food, you’re using unit bias to your advantage, rather than being a victim of it.

Makes sense right?

So share your desserts, share your entrees. It’s such a lovely way to sample all the flavours of life – without being upsized!

Are you a night-time eater?

Many of the women I work with in the clinic or the online programme Lighten Up, are night-time eaters. It’s a very common issue.

Many women talk about how it’s easy to stay on track during the day at the office, but from about 4pm onwards, things start to deteriorate.

Is that you?!

Here are three tips to help you ease back on evening overeating:

1. Are you robbing Peter to pay Paul?

Make sure you’re not cutting back so much on your portion size during the day, that it leaves you hungry in the evenings.

Yes, we can probably all cut back on our portion sizes, but often what we’re doing is cutting back so much that you are more likely to want to snack, nibble and graze after the evening meal.

When you think about it, it’s cruel to make to cut back on our portion sizes so much you make yourself hungry – and then be angry at yourself for wanting to eat!

So just check in with yourself to make sure you’re not robbing Peter to pay Paul.

2. Are you restricting the foods you’re eating?

Remember the more you say “I’m not allowed to eat this”, the more you will feel cravings for that exact food.

It’s the old what is repressed becomes the obsessed.

The key point is – all foods are on the menu. Nothing is repressed in this weight loss approach.

As soon as you’re allowed to eat whatever you want, and you don’t feel guilty for it, a lot of the drive to consume large quantities late in the day, just goes away.

3. Are you lonely?

Check-in with yourself. Despite social media and having oodles of facey friends, many clients recognise that they feel lonely but aren’t aware that they did.

We’re social creatures – no man or woman is an island.

For a lot of people, night time is when they are more likely to be alone. This loneliness can lead to extra eating.

Many clients find it freeing to have an awareness that food doesn’t have the capacity to be their friend – or at least not a very good one anyway.

What do you do when your weight loss goal seems miles away, and your motivation has gone AWOL?

Here’s a simple tip you can apply immediately to kick start your motivation.

In fact, you’re watching this video blog right now as a result of me applying this exact tip!

Here’s the tip:

According to a Canadian-based psychologist, we need to:

“stop using the “elusiveness of motivation” as an excuse to not get things done.”

Here’s what that means:

…we tend to see motivation as this “thing” that we can get, find or acquire.

And that as soon as we get, find or acquire this motivation – then it’ll be smooth sailing.

But……that as long as we don’t “have it”, we can easily blame our inaction on the fact that we just haven’t “tapped into our motivation yet”.

For example, how often do you put off looking after your body, eating healthy foods or going for a walk – until you feel like it?

We’re waiting for the feeling to arrive or to find that motivation before we do the thing we know we need to do.

But here’s the beautiful and very freeing truth.

It’s still entirely possible to act. EVEN IF WE’RE NOT FEELING motivated.

In fact – the taking action can often precede the finding of motivation.

Only this morning I faffed about for several hours before filming this video because I was looking for motivation!

Sure, it might not feel quite as good to act without possessing motivation… but we’re all completely capable of doing it anyway.

Think about the wasted hours, the months, the years that we spend looking for motivation!

So I encourage you – when motivation deserts you, stop looking for it.  Just take the action that you know you need to take. Go for that walk, move your body, and notice how motivated you feel because you’ve taken action.