Breaking Bad Eating Habits

Avoid the most common diet pitfalls in every eating situation with these tips and tricks from Gerard J. Musante’s The Structure House Weight Loss Plan

Does your food environment create some bad eating habits? Probably — it’s true for almost everyone. Fair enough. But here’s the most important question: How will you deal with the challenges you face? Are you going to get rid of your kitchen? Stop shopping at the supermarket? Resolve never to celebrate the holidays? Bar guests at the door? Of course not. Besides, your kitchen, the supermarket, the holidays, and guests aren’t really the problem. Rather, the problem is the habits you’ve developed in response to these aspects of your food environment.

My solution: change your habits. Take control of the situation, bust your old habits, and learn new, better, more creative habits.

Here’s how.

Consider the following scenes in your home. Check the habits that apply to your behavior; then use these habit busters to help you avoid Unstructured Eating.

Home Layout: “Food Areas” and “Nonfood Areas”
You keep your home heavily stocked with food ( ). Some of the foods available there are your favorite “problem foods,” ( ) and you tend to dip into them frequently ( ). In addition to regular foods for family use, you also stock special items for guests and for your own sudden cravings ( ). You store foods not only in the kitchen but also in the living room ( ), bedroom ( ), and the room where you watch TV ( ), where it’s easy to do mindless munching ( ).

Habit Busters:

• Store foods only in the kitchen, not in any other rooms.
• Eliminate snack foods, especially your behavioral “problem foods,” from routine storage.
• Throw out party foods you’ve saved “just in case” for unexpected guests.
• Teach your kids not to leave their snacks lying around to tempt you.
• Keep foods out of the living room, the TV room, and other areas that you designate as nutritional “no-fly zones.”

If you can avoid making your home into a nutritional minefield, you’re far less likely to trigger the bombs!

Menu Planning
You generally give little thought to what you eat ( ). In fact; you often decide what to buy at the last moment ( ). You think of others first and yourself last so that you prepare what they want and not what you need ( ). The only time you think ahead is when you have a craving ( ). You often have no idea what you’ll eat except just before a meal ( ).

Habit Busters:

• Buy a cookbook with healthy recipes (with nutrition analyses) to help you plan.
• Structure each week’s meals a week in advance — perhaps at a designated time, such as Sunday night.
• Note your planned meals in the Structure House Diary each week.
• Use your food group and calorie guides to plan meals.

Remember: Structuring your meals is your best defense against problematic eating habits.

Making a Shopping List
You don’t prepare a shopping list ( ), since you aren’t really sure what you’ll be eating anyway ( ). Or you make a list with just a few items you think you may need ( ). All of your lists are based on whim and impulse rather than on planning ( ). You figure you’ll just go to the store, follow your hunches, and hope for the best ( ).

Habit Busters:

• Plan your meals first, then determine the ingredients you need to buy.
• Using your menu plan, figure out the quantities of items to purchase — how many pounds of meat or vegetables, how many packages of prepared items, etc.
• Group the foods according to your supermarket layout to facilitate shopping and avoid “trolling” for unneeded treats and problem foods.
• Make sure you have the ingredients you need for each recipe in the menu plan, which will avoid improvising with more problematic ingredients or going off your plan.
• Avoid purchasing foods that aren’t on the list.

Too much planning? Not at all! If you think ahead, you’ll save yourself time and effort later. Why? Because your efforts will short-circuit by eliminating problem foods before they ever come into the house.

Shopping
When you go shopping, you generally haven’t eaten for a while, so you arrive at the store hungry ( ). Since you aren’t sure what you’re going to fix for your meals, you tend to buy items you hadn’t planned to purchase ( ). You also do “impulse buying” in response to the store’s displays ( ), free samples ( ), in-store announcements ( ), and other marketing tactics ( ). You end up leaving with all kinds of foods you hadn’t expected to purchase ( ).

Habit Busters:

• Schedule shopping trips after you’ve eaten one of your regular Structured meals.
• Shop only from a prepared list.
• See your task as time-limited and goal-oriented: just get the items on your list and clear out.
• Avoid interior aisles, which often have less crucial, more tempting foods.
• If possible, delegate shopping to other family members, or consider using only shopping and delivery services.

The less time you spend hunting and gathering, the more likely you’ll stay Structured.

Storing Food
On arriving home from the supermarket, you leave some goodies out on the kitchen table or on the counters ( ). You fill the refrigerator and the kitchen cabinets with foods in easy-access packages ( ). Many of the containers have see-through wrappers ( ) or enticing pictures ( ) of the food inside. Every time you open the fridge, the sight of all those tasty items drives you crazy ( ).

Habit Busters:

• Store foods in non-see-through containers (such as opaque plastic bowls or disposable aluminum pans); cover with aluminum foil instead of plastic wrap so that you can’t see the contents. Label with stickers so you know what’s inside without opening the containers and feeling tempted.
• Store food in individual-serving-size containers so that your meals are portion controlled. You can store the leftovers in the freezer or refrigerator and then take out the exact serving that you need, which will help you avoid overeating.
• Store only foods that need to be cooked before eating, which presents one more step to take before Unstructured Eating.
• Store all foods in the fridge or in cabinets, not on countertops, open shelves, or tables.

Out of sight, out of mind? Maybe, maybe not. But even a little forethought will save you a world of trouble by storing food in ways that aren’t so tempting.

Food Preparation
When it’s time to prepare a meal, you open up the cabinets and refrigerator and grab whatever is handy ( ). You nibble and taste the food as you work ( ). Because you haven’t planned your meal, you feel rushed ( ), which adds to your stress and tempts you to eat to ease your tension ( ). Perhaps the members of your household like different foods, so you have to prepare several different meals ( ), and so you taste each of many dishes as you cook ( ).

Habit Busters:

• Prepare only one meal for the entire family.
• If you must prepare several meals, fix simple ones, since complex recipes will guarantee more time spent in the kitchen.

‘Tis the gift to be simple. By limiting the number of separate dishes you fix and using straightforward recipes, you’ll avoid many habits that come from more elaborate efforts.

Serving the Meal
When the time comes to serve the meal, you put all the items in bowls and place them on the table ( ). This situation prompts you to serve each member of the family, and it’s easy to sample some of the dishes repeatedly as you proceed ( ). You finally sit down, exhausted and stressed, and you put a lot of food on your plate ( ) because you feel you deserve a reward after all this work.

Habit Busters:

• Plan appropriate portions of food for each member of your family.
• Fill the plates at the kitchen counter, then carry the plates to the table to avoid having serving dishes full of food at the table, which tempts you to have seconds and thirds.
• Focus on the visual appeal and taste combinations of food rather than just the quantity on your plate.
• If possible, avoid using large plates/which may dwarf portions of food and make them look inadequate.

Enjoy your meal as a family. By all means give teens the portions their growing bodies need. But avoid using the serve-at-the-table or buffet approach that so easily leads to habitual overeating.

Eating the Meal
You start eating rapidly ( ). You don’t chew your food adequately ( ), you don’t put down your utensils between mouthfuls ( ), and you finish hastily ( ). You see that food is still in the bowls in front of you, so you take seconds ( ), which upsets you but doesn’t stop you from doing it ( ). You eat too much but don’t really pay attention to what you eat ( ).

Habit Busters:

• Wait a moment before eating to savor the aromas, delight in the appearance, and anticipate the pleasure of your meal.
• Set down utensils between mouthfuls to avoid rushing and “scarfing” your meal.
• Truly taste and enjoy what you’re eating — focus on quality, not just quantity.
• Slow down so that your meal will last at least twenty minutes.
• Eat while seated rather than “on the go” — while doing household chores, talking on the phone, or multitasking in other ways.
• Don’t eat while watching TV, reading, or using the computer; just enjoy your meal!
• Enjoy the meal as family time, not just as a nutritional pit stop.

It’s amazing how many people are oblivious to the food they eat! Eating has not just become habitual, it’s almost robotic. My recommendation: Be mindful of what you eat. Focus on being fully aware of the aromas, tastes, and textures as you savor each bite. If you can truly experience your meal rather than cruise through it on autopilot, you’ll feel much more satisfied and less tempted to overeat.

Cleaning Up
When everyone leaves the table, you’re stuck with cleaning up on your own ( ). There are a lot of leftovers ( ), so, while emptying the pots and putting food away, you find yourself nibbling once again ( ). You’re really exhausted by now, which prompts you to eat as a “payback” for your fatigue ( ).

Habit Busters:

• Clean up right after eating rather than leaving food out longer, which will tempt you to go back for more.
• Delegate cleanup tasks, or else have family members work as a team, which speeds up the process.
• After the meal, sprinkle pepper on any food that remains on individual plates to make it unappetizing.
• Don’t leave any extra servings of food in pans or on the table; pack them up and refrigerate them if they’re usable or throw them out if they’re not.

Okay, so cleanup is a chore. Everyone hates it, and it’s a risky time because of the hazards it presents for more Unstructured Eating. But it’s also an opportunity to stay Structured and to avoid setting yourself up for trouble later in the day — or tomorrow.

Entertainment and Holidays
Your parties, holiday celebrations, and family occasions focus on food as the main event ( ). You prepare huge quantities of food as the chief expression of your hospitality ( ). Holiday and party foods are invariably fat-intensive ( ), sugar-laden ( ), or both. Overeating at such times isn’t just accepted in your household, it’s expected and encouraged ( ).

Habit Busters:

• All holiday meals require planning, so why not make Structure part of your plan? Recipes that are both healthy and delightful are now readily available for every kind of special occasion.
• Although eating is a wonderful part of every celebration, food doesn’t have to be the whole focus of what you do with your guests. Make sure you plan enjoyable activities other than eating.

For parties, many healthy alternatives to standard fare exist. Salsa and low-calorie dips (210 calories and 300 calories per jar, respectively) are a great replacement for regular creamy dips (800 to 1,000 calories per jar). Carrots, plum tomatoes, and other veggies — or even baked tortilla chips — are far healthier to dip than potato chips and fried tortilla chips.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gerard J. Musante, Ph.D., author of  The Structure House Weight Loss Plan: Achieve Your Ideal Weight through a New Relationship with Food (Copyright © 2007 by Structure House, Inc. and Mel Parker Books LLC), is founder and director of the residential weight loss facility, Structure House Center for Weight Control and Lifestyle Change. Dr. Musante serves as a consulting professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University Medical Center and the Duke University School of Medicine. He and his Structure House program have been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, People, USA Today, and on 60 Minutes, Anderson Cooper 360, and Good Morning America. He lives in Durham, North Carolina.

MORE ARTICLES BY THE AUTHOR

• 2 Steps to Solving Your Diet Dilemma

LEARN MORE

• Read the Introduction to The Structure House Weight Loss Plan: Achieve Your Ideal Weight through a New Relationship with Food
• See the book’s Table of Contents
• Watch the video: Dr. Musante shares the innovative and effective treatment methods he uses at his world-renowned weight loss center