episode 233: change your environment, change your behavior
This week I’m breaking down how your space might be quietly driving your cravings, overeating, and mindless snacking.
This isn’t just about putting a fruit bowl on the counter. We’re going deeper.
Inside the episode:
Why removing chocolate (or any sweet/snack) isn’t diet culture — and when it can actually help
How changing where you eat (or scroll) changes what you eat
The two ways to change your environment — and which one actually matters most
You’ve probably been blaming yourself when it’s really your setup. Let’s see if we can fix that.
🎧 Hit play to see how shifting your space can shift your habits — without relying on discipline or cutting out all your favorite foods.
And here’s the IG post referenced in the episode!
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233
[00:00:00] Hello. Hello friends. Thanks for listening to the Diet Diaries today. I'm gonna jump right in. Um, this episode's gonna air, was it Monday? Is it June 23rd, 24th, Monday, June 24th. Um, and it's kind of a little bit of a follow up or an expansion on a post that I made on Instagram. Last week, which I will include the link, and I've actually been thinking about doing that a bit more often.
Um, doing kind of a, a corresponding sister podcast episode to certain Instagram posts, um, for kind of more expansion, more elaboration, a little bit more detail, a little bit more nuance, a little bit more, uh, room to pay attention than we have on social media. I think when we're listening to a podcast, um, we are just in a little bit of a different head space and when we are scrolling social media, which I think it's, I don't know, there's certainly good stuff on there, but sometimes I wonder like, how much do we actually internalize when we are taking [00:01:00] in information in that environment, in that context?
And how do we take in information when we are listening to a podcast, which we're often doing while doing something else, driving, cooking. Making food, eating food, walking. Anyway, I'm rambling a bit. All right. Here's what I want to talk about environment. And what is the role that your environment plays with what, why, and how you are eating.
Um, and you've probably heard things before, like, have, you know, fruits and veggies readily available? Put a bowl of fruit on your counter instead of a box of cookies. And, um. You know, chop up your veggies as soon as you get home and put them in the fridge, rather than putting them in their, in their bags and their containers and letting them sit.
This is gonna be a little bit different than that. You guys have heard that before. Nothing wrong with that stuff. Um, maybe you've tried it and it's helped or it hasn't, maybe you haven't tried it. Um, this is gonna be a little bit different of a spin on things and this. Whole [00:02:00] kind of topic of conversation is the genesis is something that I have noticed for a while, but really kind of put words to, and that's what the Post is about, which is that I have an attic office upstairs, which is where I record these podcasts.
It's where I see clients on Zoom. Um, it's where I do a lot of work, but if I am not seeing clients, um, sometimes I'll work at my kitchen table and my kitchen table is obviously in my kitchen, and it is literally right next to our pantry where we keep all of our. Pantry food, including snacks. Like literally, it's like I could reach out and touch the cabinet from the table.
And I have noticed for some time that when I sit and work there, I eat a lot more food and I think about a lot more food and I get urges to eat more food much more frequently than when I am up in my office. It is very noticeable to me. And that's not surprising. I am literally sitting right next to where the food is.
So the moment that I am doing [00:03:00] something work-wise and I get either bored or frustrated or I need a break, my brain immediately goes to, oh, I can eat something. And I have become better about being aware of it and kind of sitting in that. But I also sometimes am not able to kind of cope with it, and I end up eating.
And so what I've learned is that I need to spend less time sitting in the kitchen working, and that's really what this podcast is about, not me and this specific example, but how this translates to you, right? I am changing my environment by removing myself from that environment, right? That when I work upstairs in my attic office, my environment has no food around and therefore I think about food less and eat less food when I am in an environment where there is food.
Three feet away from where I am sitting, I think about food more. I eat more food, right? It's a pretty simple fix and I will call it that, or you could call it an adjustment, um, that is very accessible to me. I really never have to sit in my kitchen to work, [00:04:00] ever. I can always work up in my office.
Sometimes it's just a little bit of a change of scenery and I will just do it for different reasons, none of which are really significant. And so it's something that I am becoming more aware of and working on. Bringing myself up here to do work, um, so that I don't have to put in that effort. Right. So what's cool about changing your environment is in some ways it can be kind of like a quick fix because you don't have to do, then I don't have to do the mental work.
I'm removing myself from a situation, so I don't even have to do that work. It's a lot harder. It takes a lot more energy for me to sit there, get the urge to eat and have to talk myself through pay attention. Am I hungry? Am I not hungry? Like. What's going on? What am I feeling? And make the choice not to eat and have that come up 10 times in an hour, literally, than it is just to remove myself from that situation and not have to think about it.
So there's kind of two ways that you can make this change. Number one. Is you can change the [00:05:00] environment around you or you can change your relationship to the environment. So me removing myself from the kitchen to do work is me changing my relationship to the environment. When you put a bowl of fruit out on the counter instead of a box of cookies, that is changing the environment around you.
So I'm gonna talk. Through a couple more examples around this. So this past weekend I removed the Instagram and Facebook apps from my phone screen. I didn't delete the apps off my phone, but I removed them from where they are. So they were like hidden. Um, that is something I was doing on a regular basis quite some time ago.
And then I stopped doing it and I am, um, working on doing it again because I need a social media break in a very big way. And it was pretty cool. So I am so automated as our, pretty much all of us, and when I go on my phone, I will tap the Instagram app and not even realize that I'm doing it. And I'll sometimes do it multiple [00:06:00] times within one phone usage session where like I'll pick up my phone, I'll see I have emails, I'll look at the emails, and I'll tap on Instagram.
Then I'll get distracted by a text, and then I'll go back and tap, tap on Instagram again, and not even realize that I was just there and already saw whatever I was looking to see. So by removing the app from the place where it always was, when I would on autopilot and automatically go to tap on it, it wasn't there.
So I literally couldn't go into it. So I changed my environment. I changed something about my phone. I. That's very different than me saying I wanna change my social media behavior and going to tap on the Instagram map and then have to say, well, why am I doing this? How much time am I, am I gonna spend, do I really need to do this right now?
That's a lot of work to go through and do that. I'm just removing the app. I'm taking away that option, and then I don't have to think about it. I don't have to do anything. I just don't use the app. Really cool. Um, this applies to right where you might be thinking, well, Jordana, you always tell us like we don't have to cut out foods and like [00:07:00] cutting out food is not the answer.
I will say long term, forever cutting out food is not an answer. But when you are first starting to make some changes, like if you are having a specific issue with chocolate, right? And you know that you are constantly overeating chocolate, you're, you're sneaking it, you're eating your kids' snacks. You are overeating it in the afternoon, you're sitting on the couch and eating it at night to start.
It might be a lot easier to remove chocolate from your environment for a period of time so that you don't have to do that work. You can start to get reps and experience. I don't have chocolate around, so I don't even have to make the decision, but do I still want it? When I want it? What do I do? How do I cope with that?
You get evidence that you can move through a situation where you have an urge for chocolate, but you don't eat it because it's not there. And sometimes it's easier to get that those reps and get that experience without the chocolate around. And then when you bring the chocolate back [00:08:00] in, you have the evidence that you are capable of this.
So it's harder because it's around. And now I actually have to make a conscious choice because this thing is in my presence. But I've done this already. And I know that I can move through this discomfort without eating this thing. Right? So absolutely there is a time and a place for removing certain foods from our environments.
Not forever, because that's just not possible, right? At some point, chocolate is going to be in your presence, right? At some point I am going to need to use social media. Um, right. So cutting things out entirely when it comes to food is. For very few people, an actual long-term solution because you are going to want to have cake.
Someone's gonna bring chocolate into your house, it's gonna be the holidays. Right. And so you need to have skills for those situations. But starting out a thousand percent, yes, removing things can be super helpful. Um, right. So that would be an example of changing something in your environment. [00:09:00] I want to talk through a couple other examples, right.
If you are. If you are constantly like on your phone while you're eating, right, whether it's scrolling social media or or checking work emails or responding to texts, and you are either eating really fast or you're finishing your meals and feeling unsatisfied and wanting to grab for snacks. What would happen if you removed your phone from that situation or removed certain apps from your phone in that situation?
I'm just gonna stick with the phone example, like, leave your phone in another room while you eat, right? You are changing your environment. It might not. I wanted to point stuff like this out and do this episode because it might not seem like you are changing your environment, but you are. Um, and so what happens if you leave your phone in another room while you eat, even for like the first five or 10 minutes?
Are you more satisfied? Are you able to slow down? Are you able to enjoy your food more because you don't have that thing? Um, so many women I've [00:10:00] worked with have talked about. Having a snack at night while they watch tv, that it is like automated that those two things, that they almost can't watch TV without having a bag of pretzels or Oreos or flaming hot Cheetos.
I'm thinking of like specific examples clients have shared with me, like it doesn't, it almost feels like weird. So how do we, so to try and. Watch TV without that food in that room can feel really uncomfortable. What would happen if you went and watched TV in a different room? If you watched on your phone, in your living room, in your bedroom, in your office, in your basement?
Does that change the association? Right. Just watching that show in a different space, make the urge to have the food less. Um. Yeah, sometimes that can be super helpful. We don't realize how much the situation we are in impacts our [00:11:00] behavior. Right. And situation is very much, environment is a huge part of situation.
Um, you know, I think we can all relate to that. We will, our eating, our eating is impacted based on who we are around with. If we who we, that didn't make sense. Based on who we are spending time with, right? Um, if we are around people who eat certain types of foods and eat a lot of food and like order tons of food, we will probably engage in those behaviors.
And if we are around people who order different types of foods or order more nutritious foods or order smaller portions, we will probably eat like that, right? This is all environment based is how all, how environment is impacting your behavior. So I'm hoping that some of these examples have gotten your brain going.
If you have. A situation that you know, that you're kind of struggling with and you're like, how, what can I do to change my environment to help with this? Reach out to me. Like, send me a DM and we can talk through it. [00:12:00] Um, because sometimes we don't think that there's maybe a solution, but, and sometimes there isn't.
There is not always, but there very often is. And again, I'm gonna leave you, there's two ways to think about this. As a reminder, you can change the environment around you. Or you can change your relationship to the environment, right? The what I talked about where like you're so conditioned to having a snack while you're watching a show in your family room.
If you go and watch that show in a different room, what happens? That is you changing your relationship to the environment. Um, and that can be really powerful. And so there's two ways into this that you can, that you can think about. Um, so let me know. If you need help, reach out. Um, and I will be back of course next week.