How to Break the High-Calorie Snack Habit

Do you struggle with an ingrained habit of munching on high-calorie foods while you are at home? There’s an easy way to break this habit – and in fact, it can be kind of fun to do it.

Many weight loss plans encourage you to remove fattening, high-calorie foods from your home so you won’t be tempted to eat them. However, if you live with other people this may not be possible. Besides, removing the foods completely is not really a good way to strengthen your willpower. Being able to turn them down while they are staring you in the face is the true test of strength, right?

With that thought in mind, here’s a great way to break your high-calorie snack habit while strengthening your willpower at the same time: rearrange your kitchen cupboards regularly so the food is always in a different location.

Most of us have our cupboards arranged for convenience, so we can quickly grab what we’re looking for. That comes in handy while cooking and preparing lunches – but it can be TOO convenient when mindlessly reaching for a snack.

So, keep moving those fattening snacks from cupboard to cupboard, putting them up on high shelves, or down underneath on the lower shelves, or in different locations in the pantry – places you wouldn’t ordinarily look for them.

See: 5 Common Reasons Your Diet May Fail

Then, the next time you mindlessly reach for a snack, you won’t find what you’re expecting to find. That’s not the end of the tactic, though.

At that moment when you realize, “Oh, I was just going to grab some cookies and they aren’t here. I moved them . . .” – do NOT go to the new cookie location! Instead, that moment should serve as a brief period of awareness where you say to yourself, “That’s right, I’ve decided to stop eating these fattening snacks. I think I’ll have a piece of fruit or some sliced raw carrots instead.”

See: 7 Healthy Snacks to Satisfy Your Sweet Tooth on a Diet

At first you might try to sneak a few cookies anyway, but over time your willpower will grow and you’ll start reaching for healthier snacks just because you’ve become aware of what you were about to do.

See: Why You Go For That Piece of Chocolate Cake

You can even place healthy snacks in the location where the high-calorie snacks used to be stored, like nuts, cups of sugar-free Jello, or fruit cups.

As simple as this strategy is, it’s extremely powerful. If you just shake yourself out of that mindless habit of reaching for foods that you no longer wish to eat, you’ll have an easier time making wiser decisions.

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