Out of sight out of mind

The grocery store can hold a treasure trove of tactics we can use at home. While it may seem that the aisles of your favorite store are just a collection of items loosely grouped by category, it is actually a carefully curated marketer’s brainchild.

When strolling down the cereal aisle what’s the first thing you see? The fiber filled flavorless gut grenade of sadness or a cartoon character ready to bring you happiness in the form of rainbow colored sugar bombs? It’s no accident. Items are placed according to where the eyes go. Sugary cereals meant to appeal to kids will be at their eye level, my demographic is probably going to be looking at the Metamucil. So how can we make this work for us?

Many of us struggle with certain foods. They are calorie dense and easy to overeat. We lean on them in times of stress or extreme emotion and they are convenient to mindlessly eat. The best advice is to keep those foods out of your house. Stock cabinets and the fridge with whole foods only making these snacking overages harder. And for me, a 42 year old fitness professional married to a health conscious woman with no kids, that’s legitimate advice. For almost everyone else, it sucks.

If you’ve got kids you’re gonna have snacks in the house. A lot of people might have roommates or partners who aren’t as swayed by food choice. So if we can’t create our ideal environment we have to learn to work around it.

So the simple trick is just to make it hard to get. When I am in a deficit I still keep some high carb options in the house for post-workout meals. While these have a purpose, slamming down Swedish Fish and Capn Crunch with impunity ain’t gonna keep that deficit going long. So I keep them in a high cabinet that we don’t use often. In order to reach them, I need to get a stool out and climb up. These obstacles create roadblocks to undesirable behaviors. Physical barriers to a psychological problem.

So if you find yourself reaching for the kids’ Cheez It’s or Fruit Snacks think about making the easy thing harder. It might just be a speed bump on the road to an undesired choice but sometimes all we need is something to slow us down.