Environments, Behaviors, and Availability
If you buy it you will eat it. If it is in the house you will eat it. If it is around your desk or the office you will eat it. Willpower is a muscle and can be strengthened, but it is only one piece of the much larger puzzle that is improving your eating habits. Nutrition is behavioral.
Is the potentially unhelpful or undesirable "bad" behavior snacking or overeating, or buying and having around in the first place? Both, but, over time, you miss less what you do not have. You think of those less desirable things less often — which is helpful — and, given that, it is easier to flex or relax that willpower muscle. You cannot eat what you do not buy and you do not buy what you do not think about. Those factors reinforce each other and the cycle supports itself.
This is not necessarily a recommendation for completely eliminating certain foods. Avoidance is not necessarily the best policy for fostering an effective, healthy and long-term relationship with food; and, alone, few particular foods or ingredients are inherently unhealthy. But, as everyone is different, non-consumption could be helpful for some people in some situations for helping them progress or achieve or maintain; if one thing always leads to another or just more of that one thing, finding ways of avoiding or abstaining from or lowering the temptation or impact of that one thing...is likely helpful.
Having the self-awareness to recognize that certain things are potentially hindering your progress towards your stated goal is valuable. One important food-related factor for any nutritional goal is availability. Availability is one important factor of your environments. Your environments influence your behaviors and decisions, your behaviors and decisions become your habits, and your habits (not simply willpower or discipline or good intentions) create outcomes.
Start looking and thinking about what is around you. What is available? Know that and act from there, because, if you do not, you are either guessing or lying or denying; and none of those behaviors are helpful.
April 2020
