Own Your Space-How Environment Shapes You

This past week the simple apple Member Group had a pretty powerful group coaching session on environment and how it effects our decision-making processes.

The initial goal was to focus on our physical surroundings and how the visual cues in our environment can trigger our not-so-favorite habits. Habits that we would really, really like to change, but find them to be quite stubborn.

The session soon took on a life of its own, as it typically does.

That is what I love about this incredible community and coaching them. They are full of life, and questions, and baggage, and ideas, and insights, and lessons hard learned that they bring to the table every time we come together.

Sometimes I think I have a pretty good topic to develop in a coaching session, and inevitably, this community brings it to greatness by adding to it and redirecting it, and we ALL walk away having shared in some pretty cool growth.

This time, the idea of triggers was really alive for them, and we dove into external and internal triggers.

I wanted to share a slice of what they worked through and offer you some take-aways that you can focus on in order to start changing some of your sticky habits that you just can’t seem to kick.

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So much of our ability to succeed with our physique, health, and performance goals rides on our environment. It is a pretty simple concept. Surround yourself with the people and things that reflect what you want for your life, and you will soon take on those characteristics.

What feels like a lifetime ago, when I was 20, I moved out of state for about a year. My then boyfriend, now ex-husband, was going to flight school and I went along on the adventure. I nannied for a family during the day and we filled our free time with a big, crazy group of people from all over the country.

The common ground on which we all met was eating and drinking. In that one year, I tried more foods and ate at more restaurants than I have since- partly because it was an epic tour of epicurean insanity and partly because kids have since put a damper on my social life!

Seriously. If I wasn’t working and he wasn’t flying, we were eating.

It was fun. And delicious…

…Until I moved home and my bestie asked if I ate my (at the time) boyfriend. She has always had a gift for shooting me straight.

I put on about 30 pounds that year (typing that made me do that uncomfortable, shift in my seat thing!).

My people and my surroundings were completely different, and I took on their characteristics without even realizing that the change was so drastic. I was still being me, loving life, working hard, and punching people in the face, but other habit-based parts of me changed.

(Okay, so there is more to that story- it went like this… big group of friends, dinner, drinks, strip club, guy makes negative comment about stripper… blah, blah, blah…punch in the face. I’ve always got a girl's back)

My year in Arizona was a pretty incredible learning experience about environment and how it shapes my life.

I view my fridge and my pantry a bit differently having earned that 30# worth of lessons while I was 2,189 miles from home. My kitchen is my family’s environment and it has immense power to shape us. We will become what we surround ourselves with.

If I keep low quality, high sugar, processed food in our house, we will eat it. Despite my best efforts to resist, or to moderate, we all know, it is getting eaten. (All of it. Because why not just eat all the ice cream in one day instead of spreading out the calories over a week???)

Processed food is an environmental trigger. Here is how it goes down: You see the food, your mind responds by thinking, “Hey, there’s some easy to consume food that tastes really good and will satisfy your need to eat.” Your body then reacts by releasing a bit of dopamine (that feel good hormone that will quickly be associated with the food of choice) followed by eating the food.

It is a process, a habit, that is super challenging to break. However, it is not impossible. It will take some serious hard work, time, and a strategic approach, though. And here is your starting point...

Remove the trigger.

Clean out the damn pantry.

Empty the fridge.

Fill your environment with food that represents what you want for yourself AND your family: clean, whole, healthy, fresh, lean. If it isn’t a healthy choice for you, it certainly isn’t a healthy choice for your kids.

This week my hometown, and a good chunk of the Northeast, is hunkered down awaiting a big snow storm. What a perfect opportunity to define what you want your environment to be and then CREATE IT. Grab hold of the reins and throw out everything that does not represent who you are working to be and what you want for your family.

Have a shitty food funeral in your kitchen.

XO-

kh

Kelly Hunter, MS Ed, simple apple Nutrition Coaching