Does your home environment encourage mindless eating? Learn how to alter food cues for weight-loss success

Sue Heikkinen, MS, RDN, CDCES, BC-ADM, ACE-PT - Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and Certified Diabetes Care and Education Specialist

Take charge of mindless eating by altering your food cues in your home. The best part? You won't even notice you are eating less when you make these simple changes.

What is mindless eating?

Have you ever found yourself surprised by the amount of food you've eaten? Do you sometimes not even remember enjoying or tasting your food? Do you grab chips from the pantry, even though you aren't actually hungry? If so, you've experienced mindless eating, meaning you ate in response to external rather than internal hunger cues.

Sometimes we are aware of external cues, such as a tempting pizza commercial on TV or a stressful day that leads to a powerful ice cream craving. Yet, often the prompts are more subtle.

Change up these common food cues to help avoid mindless eating

Container size

What happens: We eat more from larger bowls, dishes, and packages. Even people who research this topic get tricked into eating more when served food from a bigger container.

Strategies:

Check the nutrition label for a portion size "reality check."
Eat snacks from small plates or bowls instead of directly from the package.
If you buy food in bulk to save money, decant into single-serving sizes.
Use smaller dinner plates. Meals appear more generous on a 9-inch (23 cm) plate than on a larger plate.
Serve ice cream in a small bowl or even from a teacup.
Serve such caloric beverages as cocktails or juice, in tall skinny glasses instead of wide, short glasses, so they appear to be a larger volume.

Sight of food

What happens: We are more likely to eat what is in front of us, and we eat more when the food is easily accessible and in our line of sight.

Strategies:

Keep tempting treats out of sight and harder to reach (like the top shelf of the pantry).
Repackage the food in a plain container or box.
Portion high-calorie meal items onto plates in the kitchen. Serve fruit and veggies family-style from a serving dish on the table.
Put dinner leftovers away immediately to avoid the temptation of "just having a few more bites."
Keep enticing foods that don't support your goals out of the house.

Screens

What happens: You may have an association between watching TV or working at the computer and snacking on something crunchy.

Strategies:

Set a goal of eating only in a designated area (the kitchen).
If you are going to eat while watching your favorite show, portion your snack before sitting down.
Find a way to keep your hands busy-a stress ball, knitting, a fidget toy.
Sip on a cup of herbal tea.

Build positive cues

Signals to eat mindlessly are everywhere and not always possible to avoid. That is why it is essential to replace such traps with positive cues to remind you to be active and eat well.

Move your exercise bike to a sunny room instead of a dark corner of the basement.
Post a motivating image like a photo of a dream destination or a 5K registration form in a visible location to remind you of your goals.
Keep a bowl of fresh fruit on the kitchen counter.
Place precut veggies in a clear container front and center in your fridge.
Track with MyNetDiary to increase awareness of what cues affect your food choices.

Applying these strategies to thwart habitual mindless eating can help you tip the scale off a stubborn plateau, trim a few inches with little effort, and decrease sneaky snacks in favor of nutritious ones.