Why is it so easy to eat more highly processed food than you originally planned?
In this livestream episode, I’m walking through Precision Nutrition’s infographic, Why It’s So Easy to Overeat Junk Food, and adding my own perspective from years of coaching, working in marketing, and figuring out my own relationship with food.
This isn’t about telling you to eliminate junk food. I don’t think that’s realistic, and I don’t think it’s necessary.
Instead, I want you to understand some of what is happening around you.
Food is engineered to taste good. Packaging is designed to grab your attention. Health claims like high protein, high fiber, and light can influence what you buy. Variety can make us want to keep trying something new. Convenience makes food easier than ever to access.
You’re still responsible for the decisions you make, but understanding what influences those decisions can make it easier to navigate them.
We also walk through seven practical tools from the infographic, including noticing when you’re eating, evaluating the foods you keep around you, recognizing your habit patterns, creating routines that support you, slowing down while you eat, and most importantly, treating yourself with kindness and compassion when things don’t go exactly as planned.
I also share some examples from my own eating plan, including why I intentionally buy individually portioned snacks, how I keep simple meals in rotation, why I don’t think calorie and macro tracking needs to be permanent, and what throwing away half a batch of cookies taught me about progress.
The goal isn’t to become perfect at eating.
The goal is to become better at noticing what you’re doing, understanding why you’re doing it, and realizing that you can make a different decision whenever you want.
Small improvements count.
And sometimes progress really can be eating less of something than you would have before.
Check out the Precision Nutrition infographic discussed in this episode:
https://assets.precisionnutrition.com/2018/08/why-its-so-easy-to-overeat-junk-food-tablet.pdf