How do you lose weight without struggling with temptation? The reason that surgical weight loss procedures are so effective is because they remove willpower from the equation. Weight loss procedures reduce temptation by decreasing your appetite or yearning for food, as well as decreasing the size of the stomach, not only limiting your meal size, but – more importantly – limiting your indulgence. While you are considering which weight loss procedure might be best for you, here are three tricks you can take to avoid temptation in the interim.
- Avoid Supermarkets
You may have had the experience of going into the supermarket with the intention of getting healthy snacks, but having missed a meal, you find yourself throwing Pop Tarts into your cart. If that is you, make sure to eat before you do your shopping. Better yet, you might consider making someone else do your shopping. There are many grocery-delivery services in cities across the nation. Relying on these services to do your shopping eliminates the need for you to enter the den of inequity, your neighborhood supermarket. Remove temptation from the equation.
- Keep Healthy Snacks On You
As a doctor, I advise people to always keep healthy snacks available. If you do that, when hunger strikes, you have a healthy option right at your fingertips. Slide a Ziplock bag of crunchy carrots into your purse so that when you feel the urge to splurge on a greasy burger you have them available. Carry a reasonable portion of roasted almonds in your glove box. It doesn’t matter what healthy snack catches your fancy but having it easily available will mean that you don’t need to fight the temptation to fill up on that slice of cheese cake.
- Keep Junk Food Out of Sight and Out of Mind
A study from New York’s St. Bonaventure University helps show that people are inherently lazy. These researchers found that if you need to actually get up to grab an unhealthy snack, you tend to eat less of it. So, if you give into the temptation to bring a snack that is high in calories into your house, at the very least, you should keep it out of the pantry you have easy access to. One of our clients keeps unhealthy treats in her guest room and she finds that this helps her naturally eat less of them.
I hope that these simple, easy tricks help you.
Wishing you continued success on your weight wellness journey!
Dr. Waldrep
