We have locusts in our staff room. If we have biscuits or cakes on the staff room table which we frequently do they literally disappear within hours or even minutes sometimes. If you suffer from the inability to waste food as discussed before and need a dustbin then our staff table will oblige!
A study in America put sweets on the desks of the secretaries in either a clear or a white jar with a lid. The jars were the same in every way and each night after the secretaries had gone home the jars were refilled after taking note of how many had been eaten. The secretaries that had clear jars had eaten an astonishingly 77% more calories than those with the clear jar. This would have added 5ilbs in extra weight over the year! How often do you just mindlessly see food (I include biscuits, sweets etc) and just eat it because it’s there. No checking in with your body as to whether it need refuelling or not? Is this random eating of your piling on the pounds or is it making you weary during the day as your body works hard to process the random junk you shove in with no thought?
On the plus side you are less likely to overeat if you are well hydrated. My clients will see that I keep a pint glass in my desk. Not filled with a pint of bitter, I hasten to add, but a pint of water. I always have a 2 litre bottle of water near me and you will be asked if you would like a glass. This is not only to be polite but I find that I can see how likely someone is to be dehydrated by how much they drink or not during our session and whether this needs to be in their hypnotherapy recording. We often mistake the signs of dehydration for hunger so instead of reaching for a biscuit reach for a pint of water.
Top tips:
1. Keep a pint glass on your desk or at your workstation and you will drink much, much more that if you have a small glass. In another study the military found that soldiers drank 81% more water when the water jugs were put on the mess tables as against on a side table. Very important when to be dehydrated could be fatal. You will be less tired and less likely to reach for a quick sugar ‘fix’.
2. If you have ‘junk’ foods lying around or inside your fridge or a cupboard you frequent, you are having to say ‘no’ mentally so much more often. Each time you see the food you have to make a decision. So put away the ‘junk’, change the cupboard or put to the back of the fridge. The chocolate in my fridge is on the top shelf in the door with a plastic cover over it as it’s where the eggs should be. I know it’s there but I do not see it every time I open the door.
Back in the office though, my hiding places have been scouted out!! Fireproof locked cupboard perhaps?
I got really annoyed at the article in Waitrose magazine debating whether we should ban the TV supper. One argument that is missed entirely is that when you eat in front of the TV or computer for that matter, you go into an eating ‘trance’. Unless the food is overly hot or tastes ‘off’ you will not even notice what you are eating. You will be unaware of the texture, the smell, the flavour mix and you will eat everything on your plate. The TV hypnotises you with its minute flickers and I have helped more than one mother understand that her children are not deliberately ignoring her when she calls them. They are hypnotised and instead of shouting (which just winds you up) she goes and clicks her fingers in front of them she will break their trance and get their attention. 
