"Keep it simple in the kitchen. If you use quality ingredients, you don't need anything fancy to make food taste amazing." — Jamie Oliver
Your environment and surrounding culture significantly influence your daily actions. Think about your food habits when you were younger. Did you have limited food due to financial constraints, like I did? Maybe you didn't know when or where to get your next meal. Or perhaps your parents went through a war or the depression, and their eating habits formed around food scarcity. These life events may have caused them to serve large portions or remind you constantly to finish everything on your plate. Over time, this affects your mental model of eating and becomes even more complex with your reward system. The journey to better nutrition, exercise, sleep, etc. starts with learning about your thought process and making environmental changes. Let's review some simple ways to elicit driving thoughts and spruce up your kitchen.
The 5 Whys Exercise
Why? Why do you want to change your eating habits? For example, why do you eat ice cream after every dinner?. A trick to elicit why you have particular eating habits is to follow the path of 5 Whys. This exercise looks like the following.
- I eat ice cream after dinner every night. Why?
- Because I deserve a reward after working all day. Why?
- So I can feel like working is worth something. Why?
- Because my work is not that fulfilling. Why?
- I would rather become a photographer than a manager at Walmart.
So you can see that the root cause of eating ice might be your lack of fulfillment at work. Discovering underlying emotions often alleviates a roadblock in your journey to better health. However, not only your mind but also your environment shapes your decisions. Let's review some simple kitchen changes to boost your chances of success.
The Kitchen has a Cue
Foods that we see are foods that we eat. Obesity research has led to the discovery of food cue responses. Once we know the cue, like eye-level candy bars in the grocery store, we produce all kinds of bodily responses that drive us to pick it up, which is especially true for those who are obese. While this may be almost intuitive, what is not easily recognizable is the need to change the layout of your kitchen. Think about what is on top of your kitchen counter. Do you have a bag of chips, soda, or bread that's readily within the crosshairs of your boredom? Replacing these items with a fruit bowl can shift your pondering thoughts to eating something nutritionally enrichening, prevent that sugar spike-to-drop, and improve your mood.
The Package is not Your Master
Just because the Tollhouse cookie dough sleeves have 20 pre-made cookies does not mean you have to cook them. In our house, my wife only makes 1-2 thin cookies for each of us after dinner. We have discovered that producing more means eating more. But you don't have to listen to the marketing masters who have decided you need to bake 12 cookies (6 each) for you and your loved one. Multiple studies have shown that you can eat less of a snack and still be happy.
Try Shrinking down to Smaller Plates
A simple Google search for "dinner plate" brings up an 11-inch flat round object crafted of porcelain with a transparent glazed white finish and sold at Pottery Barn. Once again, tradition strikes and makes the wrong decision for us. In the 18th and 19th centuries, dinner plate diameters were 9 inches, and over time, they slowly increased, along with embracing the American ideal of abundance. However, I prefer 8" x 8" square plates, which can hold a 4-6 oz piece of chicken, 4-6 pieces of asparagus, and some apple slices very well. You can see the difference between my 10-inch "dinner plate" and the actual 8-inch plate that we use.
A Note on Weight Loss Medications
While GLP-1s offer great benefits, one of my favorite podcast guests, Dr. Stephen Faraone (Link: Episode 005 - ADHD in Children), said,
"Pills don't build skills." - Dr. Stephen Faraone
Even if you take Wegovy or Ozempic, you must improve your nutritional IQ and eating skills. Luckily, you've just read a great article that lists one mind exercise and three environmental changes to work on. Plus, you didn't have to wade through advertising saying, "Hey, eat more of our highly processed, nutrient-free, hormone-imbalancing food!" If you know of a friend or loved one who would benefit from this message, please forward it to them.
Journal Prompt: What's one thing you can do to change your kitchen and meet your healthy goals?
References
- Belfort-DeAguiar R, Seo D. Food Cues and Obesity: Overpowering Hormones and Energy Balance Regulation. Curr Obes Rep. 2018 Jun;7(2):122-129. doi: 10.1007/s13679-018-0303-1. PMID: 29619632; PMCID: PMC5959777.
