Food Sabotage At Work

Will power. The desire to look good is stronger than the desire to eat a cookie.

Try to walk the long way around them, so you don't have to see them. That helps a lot. Don't let anyone park snacks near your desk. Make healthy snack foods more accessible than the junky stuff. If you have to walk by the snacks, try really hard not to look at them, and repeat your goal over and over in your head while you do. "That snack isn't going to help me to get to my 45 pound weight lose goal!" I tell myself, as I walk by the counter where they keep snacks. Also, I do occasionally just have one, and work it into my day.

Google has free M&Ms for their employees, and they found that if they put a lid on the candies, and put healthier snacks right next to them in open containers, "In the New York office alone, employees consumed 3.1 million fewer calories from M&Ms over seven weeks. That’s a decrease of nine vending-machine-size packages of M&Ms for each of the office’s 2,000 employees."

Humans are very out of site, out of mind creatures, (and saying "Just don't eat them" is not helpful, by the way). Perhaps you can provide snack "bins" to the office that have lids, or make sure the lids on the doughnut boxes are closed.

Even better, try providing a healthy alternative right next to the snacks, to keep yourself on track, and help others in your office to make healthy choices. I keep an emergency bag of dried fruit that I put out a bit of next to unhealthy snacks in the office to help all of us trying to lose weight.

Remember to have faith in yourself, your diet plan, and your decisions to eat healthier. You can do this! Also, remember, if you eat one small piece of candy or a doughnut, it's not the end of the world!

Keep on keeping on, my friend!

I've used mantras...my favorite is "nothing tastes as good as fit feels". I also really look at the food and am like, you know that is not even the worlds best cupcake it is a cheap store bought one. And if I know we have our birthday cake for someone in the office I'll just save my afternoon snack to eat during that time. After saying no time and again it becomes much easier. I pretty much don't treat myself at work because it is usually not worth it. I feel much better about myself for longer after saying no than the quick sweet taste of the sugar would have lasted.

It's always mind over matter.

Best of luck!

At the end of the day, it's your decision what you eat and drink - however much someone waves cake or chocolate in your face, it's still your decision to actually put it in your mouth and swallow. So, if you really don't want to eat the unhealthy snacks people bring into work, um, don't.

I saw a really cool quote the other day that has stuck with me: "Don't be upset about the results you didn't get from the workout you didn't do". You could equally relate this to food...something like "Don't be upset about the weight you didn't lose because you ate all the cake"...or something.

ETA: If you want to eat the cake, then eat the cake. If it takes you over your calories, just adjust your goals for the next day or two to compensate, or do an extra workout. It's no biggie.

If I want a snack candy, I'll put the numbers into MFP. If it's too high or if I can substitute something else, that might work. Example: I wanted a "fun sized" pack of Peanut M&Ms the other day. After looking at how many calories, etc that little pack had, I decided to eat a teaspoon of crunchy peanut butter instead. All I wanted was the nutty, crunchy texture/flavor.

Sabine_Stroehm wrote: »

That's not sabotage. That's just folks living their own lives.

^This...

We have stuff where I work ALL the time and most of it is not healthy stuff. I typically know about it ahead of time so if it's something I want then I plan ahead and save calories for it so I can fit it into my goals. A lot of the time I either have a very small amount or I just pass on it entirely. Only you can decide which items are "worth it" to you and which are not. I've learned to think about this pretty hard as there have been a few times I ate something and almost immediately regretted "wasting" my calories on the item.

In for sabotage!

The battle is in my mind. If I don't think about it, I won't eat it.