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Kitchen layout and weight loss
lorrpb
Posts: 11,463 Member
in Debate Club
Do you think the layout of your kitchen and home could help or hinder weight loss? For example, many people like open concept where the kitchen and living areas are combined, so the kitchen is always in full view. Does this tempt one to snack and graze more than in a home where the kitchen is “out of sight, out of mind”. Are there features in a kitchen that might encourage /discourage unnecessary eating, particularly types or locations of storage? Im sure people can and lose weight and gain weight in any type of home, but it seems there are features that could make it easier or harder to reach your goals.
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Replies
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Time lock on the fridge
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I think it's more about how you store food within the kitchen than open concept or not. I used to have open concept and never snacked, since I didn't really have snack food at home and it wasn't out. If you have food out on the counter or what not, I think it's more likely that one might impulse eat.
I may be weird, but at home snacking/eating has never been a big thing for me, since the foods I have at home require cooking or aren't foods I tend to be drawn to, normally (I just realized I have a bunch of leftover Halloween candy in the pantry, but I don't really like those kinds of chocolates, so am not tempted -- they could last until next Halloween unless I have a reason to give them away before). I tend to be tempted at work when I'm tempted.1 -
I don't find it a big deal myself, but for my kids I find it a good idea to keep the fruit bowl full - they are much more likely to grab an apple or banana if it's sitting right there.1
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My kitchen is in a seperate room but has no door. It has plenty of cabinets and I am able to put food out of sight except a fruit bowl and bread loaf. It is a fairly large room so I sometimes end up walking through there when I walk around indoors.
I think having other levels of the house to go to can be helpful at times when I don't want to eat but the food is calling. Climbing stairs in my house multiple times a day is more natural activity than I would have if I lived in a 1 bedroom apartment on a ground floor.0 -
I never really find the kitchen to be a temptation in terms of "oh there's a kitchen, it has food in it, go eat it." But I bought my condo primarily for two reasons and both were related to food. The first was that the kitchen itself was much bigger than apartments of a comparable or even bigger size. It has a lot less living space, but to me, that is often unused space, as we have enough space for a couch, TV, and dining room, and no kids running around so it was unnecessary. But a large kitchen was something I wanted because it makes it a lot easier to cook and prepare food in. In our prior apartments, even though they were both about 250 square feet bigger than our current one, the kitchen was so small that my wife and I couldn't be in it at the same time. That made it hard to work as a team to cook and meal prep. Now our current kitchen is like a big square, so there is plenty of space for both of us. It has definitely helped with weight loss.
The second reason I bought it is because it is on the same street as a really good supermarket that has a lot of good options for food, especially meat and produce. This has helped both with weight loss and also saving money, as I cook more now and eat out less when I can just walk to the store and pick up what I need for a night.
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I don't know about kitchen design but we keep most of the good treats in the basement cold cellar so they are out of sight. Also some goodies are kept frozen (donuts, ice cream, cakes etc) and are either in the basement or garage freezer, mostly I'm too lazy to defrost and get the treats so I have something else.3
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Kitchens are designed along the lines of the efficiency triangle - the distance between the refrigerator, stove, and sink.
Deliberately inserting inefficiency is one tactic to deficit, but you have to consider how this may negatively impact other aspects.
A good mindset to have when laying out a kitchen or anything is to reinforce positive behaviors and minimize negative behaviors. Make access to healthy foods, scales, etc. and push those calorie dense foods/risky foods for you to the back.-1 -
Kitchen efficiency will definitely affect your willingness to cook. My kitchen is tiny (townhouse). Trying to cook anything more complicated then "sear a steak, nuke some frozen veggies" requires me to have a completely clean kitchen. I can't have dirty dishes on the counter, clean dishes or dry goods on the counter, etc. It can get really frustrating when I've got bowls of fresh veggies prepped for later steps, and something like slaw marinating in a bowl, and now I need to do something with raw meat and I'm trying to figure out where I can put the cutting board.
So there are definitely days when I have all the ingredients for the recipe and just "nope" right past it and make a PB&J.5 -
My kitchen is on a different level than our family room. I know it's helped a little, because I'll be thinking I'm snacky but will be to lazy to actually go upstairs and get something.3
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The biggest thing for me is not having desserts sitting out on the counter. Having cookies on the counter in sight and easy reach seems to be the one thing that can really lead me to mindless snacking. Chips, crackers, alcohol, fruit, in that location are fine. But not the cookies! If the kitchen was totally outside the traffic flow of the house this might not matter, but I think that would be hard to do in a home the size of mine.3
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.... it's not the layout of the kitchen as much as what is kept there.11
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I grew up in house where the kitchen was closed off. I think that I actually ate more but it had nothing to do with the kitchen layout. I'm just five pounds heavier now than I was back then. My own house now is an open plan kitchen layout which we chose to make it more conducive to social gatherings. It is not more or less tempting compared to the my mom's kitchen. The only thing I liked about my mom's kitchen is that it was next to the driveway so that it made it easier to unload groceries from the car.2
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My kitchen is in a separate room, as opposed to my old apartment where everything was open concept. In my experience, this has had little to no effect on my eating habits. It's only during the rare times when I'm watching television that I feel temptation to eat food. Even that's largely due to boredom, not home layout design (because TV bores me). Interesting question though, good one!2
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I have an itty bitty kitchen that right now leads into a room that we're remodeling-last week my fridge was in the middle of my kitchen and you could only open the door halfway
There's very limited counter space but my food scale and Nutribullet are both on it and shall always get first dibs on the counter lol.
Our old house had an open floor concept vs our current one which is its own room. Neither layouts have had any impact on my weight management plan. However, learning how to properly store food has-now that I know how to properly store veggies and fruit, to last longer, I've been able to eat a lot more of them. I also spent $30 on a used deep freezer a few months ago and it's on our porch now-this has allowed me to stock up on frozen produce/meat deals, which helps with impulse shopping/eating out.0 -
Interesting question. We use our outdoor kitchen multiple times a week if the weather permits. I have two kamado grills that use lump charcoal and a wood fired oven - the point is it takes time to get them going and we have to plan our meals. The leftovers are whatever we cooked and at least me our criterion for "healthy".
We tend to not have commercial packaged snacks so I find it less tempting to graze on a calorie dense item. Sometimes before bed I find myself looking for a snack - something healthy - it's easier since I don't have the cookies and stuff that are more calorie laden. I'll grab a piece of fruit or veggie and gnaw on that instead. If the Oreos were there I'd be all over them.
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Great question!
Not only do I have to past my kitchen when I go up to the second level and the basement, but my home office is literately right across! When I was heavy I certainly took advantage of it while working with snacking and drinks (soda, juice).
While I was losing weight I learned to implement certain rules for myself. It didn't happen overnight, but eventually I:
- Cut out all snacking and ate filling, balanced meals. This keeps me full so there's no need to eat in between meals.
- Stopped drinking calories. Just water and unsweetened tea. I was shocked with how many empty calories I was drinking once I started journaling.
- No longer keep snacks and treats in my house. Now I plan ahead for it, I have to go out and buy it or make it myself. Usually I end up forgetting about it since it's not accessible.
- Trained myself to close the kitchen after dinner. No more mindless snacking while watching tv at night. Instead I go out for walk, get a workout in, hangout with my family or read.
As someone that was used to eating whatever I wanted whenever I wanted it, this plan has worked extremely well for me.5 -
Food environment totally impacts weight loss!
I'm currently living in a place where i dont feel comfortable having copious amounts of food in our shared fridge/freezer and I store non-perishable food in my bedroom in a cabinet.
Obviously storage is limited so I can only store xxx amount of food without it overflowing.
Do i eat the healthiest, most well-rounded diet? Not by any means, lol. (Add me if you want, I've got an open journal and try my best to accurately log)
Coming from somewhere with my own personal kitchen, to a place with a shared kitchen, DEFINITELY made me lose weight without trying.1 -
My home kitchen is an open concept. Since I have been working from home for the last 3 months, my "office" is set up on the kitchen table, in view of the refrigerator. From my laptop I can see two boxes of cookies and a container of Reese's snack-sized peanut butter cups. I have lost 6 pounds.
At my office building, I work in a cube farm. The kitchen is down the hall and around the corner. I snack all day long.
I think for me it's not so much mindless grazing as it is seeking out food when I feel I need it whether from hunger, stress, etc.. At my office I am more stressed, so I tend to want sugary and salty snacks more than when I am at home.1 -
It makes some difference but not much. If I leave cookies on the counter I'll find reasons to go past that counter, whatever the design of the kitchen. (wry grin) That's why when I make cookies to have with meals, I let them cool and go do something else absorbing while they cool, and then put them up by half-dozens and freeze them. (There are three of us in the family, so a half-dozen is exactly right.) Out of sight out of mind, and it's only about once a month that I desperately want to eat the cookies, and even then I can usually divert myself with some hot cocoa.
The trick for me is to eat the right food on time, and then I don't snack. But if I'm walking around seriously hungry, all bets are off. That's why I try to make sure I never get seriously hungry.1 -
I'm less sure now about this. There was research that suggested food out of sight, out of mind helps, but I believe a lot of it came out of the Cornell labs run by Wansink. Wansink was found to have not just done p-hacking on various studies but also just whole sale created data.
My general principle is usually to make the best choice automatic. Following that, it still would flow that one would put easily consumed foods out of sight. That one would organize the kitchen in such a was as to encourage cooking.1 -
I actually utilize what a lot of people consider dangerous snacky foods in my diet (I can't eat strawberries so I have Rice Krispie bars instead) and I keep the things like the aforementioned bars in the pantry, where I have to go into the pantry proper and get them, as opposed to reaching them from the door. And the little cups of ice cream live in the garage freezer, so they don't tempt anyone when they're just getting some ice for their tea. So I have to think about it and make a special trip for these, and that lets me just make sure that's really how I want to spend those calories.
It's a lot easier to face cooking with a clean kitchen, that's for sure. Usually I do dishes after I cook a meal, though if lunch was something simple like the hot beef sandwiches today, I let the three plates, cookie sheet, flat turner, and slotted spoon wait and wash them with dinner. I had to soak the crock-pot liner anyway. But in that case I make sure to wash it all up before bed, because I can face a counter full of clean dishes needing put away better than I face a mountain of dirty ones.
I have to cook for us, though, as we have numerous food sensitivities/intolerances/allergies, and it's just cheaper and better food if I make it at home.0
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