Hey Reader,​

I have a confession.

I wait until the last possible minute to buy Halloween candy.

Why? Because if there's a big bowl of chocolate sitting around my house for 2 weeks, I'm probably going to eat more of it than I intended. 🙃

Chocolate is one of my personal "problem foods." Along with fruit snacks (the processed ones, people, not actual fruit 😉) and Cheetos.

You probably have a few foods like that, too.

Foods you love, but once you start eating them, it's hard to stop.

To be clear, just because these are my “problem” foods, doesn’t mean I don’t ever eat them. But I also DON’T keep them in my house. It’s part of my “safety net” to help me stay on track with my goals.

And there's some interesting research behind this.

In a study at Penn State University, researchers asked 186 women (who they classified with “overweight” or “obesity”) to rank the “foods you can’t resist and find hard to stop eating.”

The foods that most frequently topped the participants’ lists:

Ice cream, Chips, Chocolate, Cookies, Pizza

The scientists then had participants follow a 12-month weight loss program, and monitored their strategies for managing these “problem” foods.

The result: Overall, the total avoidance of problematic foods, what you often see on “extreme” diets or “quick-fix” weight loss plans, wasn’t an effective strategy.

So what did help? Limiting the portion sizes of problem foods, instead of giving them up altogether, was strongly related to weight loss.

In fact, participants who used this strategy the most lost, on average, nearly double the weight as those who used it the least (15.8 pounds versus 8.3 pounds).

So what does that mean for you, especially with Halloween tomorrow?

You have options!

Maybe you wait until Halloween to buy candy, like I do.

Maybe you buy candy that you enjoy handing out but aren't particularly tempted to eat yourself. (For me, that's candy like Skittles or Starbursts.)

Or maybe you choose a few pieces of your favorite candy, sit down, and actually enjoy them instead of grabbing handfuls every time you walk past the bowl.

The goal is to find strategies that help you enjoy foods you love while still feeling good about your choices.

This is actually something we talked about this past week in The Consistency Project, my group nutrition coaching program.

We discussed a concept called "Shape the Path," from the book Switch by Chip and Dan Heath.

The authors use an analogy of an elephant, a rider sitting on top of it, and the path they're traveling down to explain why changing our behavior can be so difficult.

• The Rider represents your logical side. It's the part of you that knows what you want to do and why.
• The Elephant represents your emotional, instinctive side. It's driven by feelings, habits, cravings, and immediate rewards. And it's a whole lot stronger than the Rider!
• The Path represents your environment and the circumstances that influence your choices.

Now imagine trying to steer a 6-ton elephant down a particular path.

You might know exactly where you want to go, but if the Elephant sees something appealing in another direction, good luck steering it back!

And if one path is wide, smooth, and easy to follow, while the other is full of obstacles, which do you think the Elephant will naturally gravitate toward?

That's the idea behind shaping the path.

Instead of relying on the Rider to constantly wrestle the Elephant in the right direction, you change the environment to make your desired path easier to follow.

And you can put a few obstacles in the way of the path you'd rather take less often.

For example:

• Keep protein drinks, yogurt, string cheese, and ready-to-eat leftovers front and center in your fridge.
• Move Halloween candy and other tempting snacks out of sight, perhaps to a high shelf or the back of the pantry.
• Buy smaller packages of foods you tend to mindlessly snack on.
• Wait until Halloween to buy the candy (my personal favorite!).

Sometimes, something as simple as having to walk to another room, open a cupboard, or move a few things out of the way creates just enough of a pause to reconsider your choice.

You're making the choices you WANT to make easier, and the choices you'd like to make less often a little more inconvenient.

Your Rider still gets to decide where you're going. You're simply making the path easier for your Elephant to follow.

So here's something to think about:

What's ONE small change you could make to your environment this week that would make a less helpful choice a little more inconvenient?

Hit reply and tell me. I'd love to hear what works for you!

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Until Next Time,