You eat what you see

Rachel has her action steps. She will eat two pieces of fruit and a cup of vegetables per day. And she will write those exact foods on her habit tracker.

Now comes the part that decides whether any of it happens.

She is not going to focus on her self-discipline. She is going to change her surroundings.

She moves every bag of chips, every cookie, and every box of crackers to a shelf in the basement. Now she won’t see them by accident. With trigger foods, out of sight usually means out of mind. Rachel knows her biggest food enemy is ice cream, so she throws the tub of ice cream in the trash.

Then she stacks the front of the refrigerator and the front of the pantry with fruit, vegetables, beans, whole grains, nuts, and seeds. The apples, mangoes, oranges, 100% whole grain bread, and avocados sit at eye level, ready to eat.

She now has Environment-Focused action steps. Most people don’t know how powerful this is. When researchers looked closely at people who scored high on self-discipline, they realized they were not resisting temptation better than everyone else. They were better at structuring their environment to make their healthy habits easy to perform and their bad habits difficult. They had to use self-control much less often than those who rated as not having good self-discipline.

Next week Rachel decides where and when she will eat each food.

Want to see how all five parts of IDEAL Goals fit together? Watch the 45-second video.