10 Easy Ways to Eat Healthier Without Thinking
Your environment has an incredible ability to shape your behavior. If you create an environment that promotes healthy habits, you will find yourself improving your diet without even thinking about it.
This post was originally published on JamesClear.com .
I’ve written before about architectural choices and environmental design , both of which focus on the idea: “By making small changes to the physical environment around you, it becomes much easier to stick to good habits.”
While the research I’ve shared in these articles is interesting, I thought it might be helpful to list some practical ways to apply environmental design to your world and make life healthy, happy, and adventurous easier.
With that in mind, here are 10 simple strategies for creating an environment where you eat healthy food without thinking and spend more time and energy doing something amazing.
Keep in mind that these ideas are just the beginning. You can apply these concepts to design your environment and create the best “architecture of choice” for almost any habit or behavior.
How to eat right without noticing
Before we start, let’s give credit to the researcher behind many of these ideas. Brian Wansink is a professor at Cornell University and has done a lot of research on how your environment influences your food decisions. Many of the ideas below are taken from his popular book Mindless Eating ( audiobook ).
1. Use smaller plates. The larger the plate, the larger the serving. This means that you eat more. According to a study by Wansink and his research team, if you make a simple change and serve dinner on a 10-inch plate instead of a 12-inch plate, you will be eating 22% less food over the next year.
By the way, if you’re thinking, “I’ll just put less food on my plate” … it’s not that easy. The picture below explains why. When you eat a small portion from a large plate, your mind feels dissatisfied. Meanwhile, this same serving will feel more filling when eaten from a small plate. The circles in the image below are the same size, but your brain (and stomach) doesn’t perceive them that way.
2. Make water more accessible. Most of us mindlessly take a sip of soda or coffee when we are doing other things. Try this instead: Buy a large water bottle and place it somewhere nearby for the whole day. You will find that if he is sitting next to you, you often choose water and avoid less healthy drink options, naturally.
Note: I love this Vapur water bottle because it holds a lot of water and folds up compact enough to fit in a backpack, purse or pocket. Ideal for travel as well.
3. Want to drink less alcohol or carbonated drinks? Use tall, thin glasses instead of short, thick glasses.
Take a look at the image below. Is the horizontal or vertical line longer?
It turns out that both lines are the same length, but our brains tend to overestimate vertical lines. In other words, taller drinks seem to us more than round horizontal mugs. And since the height makes things appear wider, you will actually drink less from taller glasses. In fact, you will typically drink about 20% less from a tall, thin glass than from a short, thick glass. (Tip from Darya Rose for initially sharing this image and idea.)
4. Use plates in a contrasting color to the food. As I mentioned in this article , when the color of your plate matches the color of your food, you naturally serve yourself more because it is difficult for your brain to tell the difference between serving size and plate. Because of this, dark green and dark blue make great plate colors because they contrast with lighter foods like pasta and potatoes (which means you’ll probably be serving them less) but don’t contrast much with leafy greens and vegetables (which means you’ll probably put more on your plate).
5. Display healthy foods in a prominent place. For example, you can place a bowl of fruit or nuts near your front door or anywhere else you pass by before leaving the house. When you are hungry and in a hurry, you are more likely to grab the first thing you see.
6. Wrap junk food in foil. Wrap healthy foods with plastic wrap. The old adage “out of sight, out of mind” turns out to be true. Food is not only a physical but also an emotional event. Your mind often determines what it wants to eat based on what your eyes see. So, if you hide unhealthy food by wrapping it up or putting it away in less visible areas, you’re less likely to eat it.
7. Store healthy foods in large packages and containers, and unhealthy foods in smaller ones. Large boxes and containers tend to grab your attention, take up space in the kitchen and pantry, and otherwise get in the way. As a result, you are more likely to notice them and eat them. Meanwhile, smaller items can hide in your kitchen for months. (Just look at what you have lying around right now. These are probably small cans and containers.)
Bonus tip: If you buy a large box of something unhealthy, you can repack it in smaller bags or Ziploc containers, which should reduce the likelihood of you moving out and eating a lot right away.
8. Serve the dishes according to the “half plate” rule. You can also design your eating environment. When serving your dinner, start by preparing half of your plate of fruits or vegetables. Then pour in the rest of the dish according to this limit.
9. Use the Outer Rim strategy to buy healthier foods. The idea is simple: When you go grocery shopping, don’t walk down the aisles. Shop only around the outer perimeter of the store. Typically healthy foods live here: fruits, vegetables, lean meats, fish, eggs and nuts. If you only shop on the outer ring, you are more likely to buy healthy food. And that, of course, means that you are more likely to eat healthy foods when you get home.
10. With regard to the tenth strategy, let’s apply these concepts to some other areas of life …
Applying environment design to the rest of your life
When you really break each of these strategies, you will see that each is a small tweak that puts more steps between you and bad behavior and fewer steps between you and good behavior.
For instance…
- Another step is to wrap the junk food in foil. You have to see the dish, then open it to see what’s inside, and then decide to eat it. (Rather than just finding leftover food in plastic wrap and grabbing it.)
- Using small plates adds another step between you and a lot of food. If you want more, you need to go back a few seconds and refill.
You can use this approach to almost everything in life. If you want to complicate the bad behavior, increase the number of steps between you and the behavior.
In the meantime, if you want to simplify good behavior, reduce the number of steps between you and the behavior. For example, if you want to make your run easier, lay out your shoes and running equipment the day before your workout. One step less between you and your workout.
10 Simple Ways To Eat Healthy Without Hesitation, Backed By Science | James Clear