Take Charge of Your Environment

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Here is the meeting summary for Saturday 15, 2011.

This week in the meeting room we talked about taking charge of your environment.

Does this sound familiar:
Betty has had a long day. At work she faced a deadline, so she skipped lunch. Now she's home, she's starving, and it's time to make dinner. So she decides to have a snack. She checks the fridge, but it's empty. The pantry is also bare. But in the cupboard she finds an unopened bag of potato chips. She rips it open and digs in.

We have all been there! The best way to handle these types of temptations is to reevaluate your environment. We must learn how to adopt healthy habits.

Keep healthy opportunities close. It helps your efforts when you fill your spaces—your house, your office, your car—with foods that make it easier for you to stay on track.

Managing Your Environment means...
Really looking at your environment: your car, kitchen or desk and remembering the three R's:
• Recognizing the foods that will help you—and the ones that won't.
• Removing the items that you are sure will get in the way of your weight-loss efforts.
• Replacing the foods you've removed with healthy ones like fruit and vegetables.

Considering what changes you can make in your exercise environment that will help, such as tuning up your bike or simply getting out your exercise gear.

Make it easier on yourself: Manage Your Environment
"Don't agonize. Organize." -Florence Kennedy.

We all have our "trigger" foods or places—the snacks and sweets which can destroy our willpower and make us forget all about those weight-loss plans.

But some of us do what we can to minimize our exposure to triggers; managing our environments so we're not always around foods that tempt us. And that makes sense: When the spaces that surround us—our fridge, pantry or car—are crammed with tempting foods, we'll be tempted by them. When it's right there, we'll eat it.

When we stock up on healthy alternatives, though, we'll make healthier choices. And suddenly, our environment is working for us.

Managing Your Environment is a helpful habit because:
• When you take charge of the foods that fill up the spaces that surround you, they'll stop having control over you. Fewer tempting foods = less temptation.
• Looking through those spaces and being able to recognize trigger foods is a great exercise: It means facing and naming your weaknesses, which can only make you stronger.
• Filling your environment with healthy foods is like studying hard for an exam: you're laying the groundwork for your future success.

Bonnie, Baltimore, MD, lost 28.6 pounds and says, "If I don't make changes to the food that's around me, I'm still going to eat what's there—even if its unhealthy."

If you discover you need to Manage Your Environment...
Get on the Message Boards and ask other WeightWatchers.com users what changes they have made to their environments. Some may have "managed" places in ways that may be relevant to you.

Taken from “Habit Guide: Manage Your Environment” Article By: Weight Watchers