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Picture this. You’re trying to lose a few pounds, and you’re making good progress. Then your spouse decides to bake some cookies. Before you know it, you’ve eaten six of them. I know this can happen, because it’s exactly what happened to me a few days ago. (Thanks a lot, babe.) Let’s talk about how you can avoid doing what I did.
Contrary to what you may be thinking, “eliminate all junk food” is not the solution. In fact, I encourage my clients to have some junk food (or as I like to call them, “fun foods”) in their diets. Having some junk food included in the diet will make it easier to stick to the diet, assuming you don’t go overboard.
If you ban certain foods from your diet, typically, you start to crave those foods. The desire for those foods slowly grows until you cave in and gorge yourself on them, derailing your progress. For most people, allowing yourself to have some junk food, will help you to not feel so deprived and will help you stick to the diet long-term.
That said, there are certain foods that once you get your hands on them, you can’t stop eating. Those foods “trigger” you to continue eating. Each person has their own “trigger foods”. My trigger foods are cookies, crackers, and chips.
These are pretty common. Typically, trigger foods are foods that are bite sized, in large packages, and are easy to grab “just one more” of.
How To Fix This
The first step to fixing a problem with trigger foods is to simply pay attention and identify what those foods are. Once you know which foods are the problem, there are three options:
1) Portion and prepackage trigger foods.
If the food that causes you to overeat is your first true love and you can’t stand the thought of living without it, try portioning and prepackaging that food.
Using the cookie example from earlier, get one or two cookies and put them in a sandwich bag. Portion all the cookies out and place the bags into a cabinet so that you aren’t looking at them every time you walk through the kitchen. (Out of sight, out of mind.) When you decide you want cookies, go to the cabinet, grab one bag, and walk away.
This won’t work for everyone. After all, you could simply walk to the cabinet and grab another bag. That’s where option two comes in.
2) Avoid trigger foods entirely.
For some, it’s easier just to completely abstain from certain foods. If you have a hard time with moderation, it may be best just to clear the cabinets of your trigger foods entirely. Personally, I can do without cookies and never miss them, but if I have one, I want several.
But again, this won’t work for everyone either. Abstaining from a certain food can lead people to feel deprived and go off the rails like I mentioned earlier.
If neither of these options work, you can try for a middle-of-the-road approach.
3) Purchase trigger foods in small quantities.
If you have a hard time with moderation, but complete abstinence from certain foods makes you crazy, try purchasing a single serving of your trigger foods when you go grocery shopping. This option will allow you to have that food on occasion, so you don’t go crazy and it will also make it very difficult to overeat on your trigger foods because you would have to get in your car and drive all the way back to the grocery store just to get more of it.
Takeaway
There is no one right solution for dealing with trigger foods. You will just need to try each of the three options and see which works best for you.
Thank you so much for reading! If you found this information helpful and want to help the Treadaway Training blogcast grow, simply share this post with a friend. If you like what I have to say, sign up below to become a Treadaway Training insider or check out my YouTube channel. I will be back here Saturday with another body transformation topic. As always, God bless you AND your family and I'll see you Saturday.
