How to Keep Sweets In Your House Without Overeating

I’m sharing my 3 top tips on how to keep sweets in your house without overeating them. If you ever feel like you can’t keep sweets in your house without eating them all, you’re not alone! (I was once there myself!) I’m going to show you how to keep sweets in your house and enjoy them instead of depriving yourself.

One of the most common sentiments I hear from clients and Nutrition Training Program students when we first begin working together is…

“Help! I can’t keep [insert favorite food] in the house because then I just won’t stop eating it!”

Whether “[insert your favorite food]” is cake, cookies, potato chips, ice cream, candy, or any of the other zillions of foods out there, if you’ve ever thought this, you’re not alone!

And I’ll go ahead and share that I once had the same belief and wouldn’t keep crackers, pretzels, chocolate, and cookies in my pantry. AND once upon a time told my clients to just keep their “overdo it foods” out of the house too. (*smacks self in face*)

Do you keep sweets out of the house for fear of overeating them?

As I’ve refined my nutrition practice over the years and continue to learn more about the science behind willpower and temptation of food, I’ve learned that keeping sweets out of the house just isn’t how it works for a long-term, sustainable healthy relationship with food or your body.

Sure, you can keep sweets out of the house for a month or two. You may even forget about them and it’s not a big deal. But then what happens when Halloween rolls around and you have an excess of mini candies from your kids’ trick or treating?

Or you go to a party and there’s a big bowl of your favorite crispy tortilla chips next to the guac and salsa? You can pretty much SMELL the salty crunch!

Do you ever keep sweets out of the house to be smacked in the face with your temptation?

My guess is that if you’re reading this the answer is a big fat YES. And you’re not alone because guess what – this is LIFE!

Life includes fun foods… and it should!

AND you should be able to feel confident and in control around these foods.

I know from first-hand experience that it doesn’t feel good to feel like you have to eat it all now before your favorite food is “off limits” again.

Let me tell you about my client Carly…

Carly and I started working together because she was feeling so exhausted and was tired of jumping from one diet to another. She had recently gained a few pounds, and wasn’t happy about it, but really she wanted to learn a sustainable way of eating so she didn’t have to count macros or calories. Carly was SO OVER My Fitness Pal.

Carly was a salty snacker. Potato chips, pretzels, goldfish, tortilla chips and salsa were all her favorites… but she didn’t keep ANY of them in the house.

Every once in a while she would buy them for her kids, but would’t allow herself to eat them at snack time. After a long day with her kids, she would finish the rest of the bag in on sitting. And feel kinda gross after.

She felt guilty because she kept telling herself she wouldn’t do that anymore! (UGH, I know how this feels because I’ve been there too, girl!)

Carly loves Mexican food and she always followed the go-to diet tip of “ordering crudités instead of chips with the salsa and guacamole.”

And she would devour her crudités, only to have the basket of warm, salty, crispy, homemade tortilla chips staring her in the face. Everyone else was chowing down, so eventually her willpower would crumble…

So Carly would take a few chips from the basket and put them on her plate telling herself “I’ll only eat these few.” (If you’ve ever been there, like me, I know you’re thinking “yeah right!” too!)

And that small handful turns into another here and there… and the waiter seamlessly brings over a refill without Carly even noticing until she felt uncomfortably full. And then she would tell me that she wasn’t even hungry for her entree that she ordered!

Every time Carly left a Mexican restaurant, she felt like she had to unbutton her jeans and roll home. Even worse, she felt GUILTY for “throwing in the towel” on her progress.

Has this ever happened to you?

Personally, I could so relate to Carly when she was telling me this story because this was my experience too. I would NEVER keep “bad” foods in the house because it was all or nothing.

But then when I went out and encountered my favorites, I couldn’t just have enough to feel satisfied. I would OVER do it, feel disgustingly full, and GUILTY. UGH! I would vow to never eating the chips or candy again.

But you can learn how to stop overeating these indulgent foods.

I work on keeping favorite foods in the homes of all of my clients. Because if you want a cookie, I truly believe you should have a cookie!

And today I’m going to share my top 3 tips with you on how to keep sweets in your house without overeating them.

You don’t need to rely on willpower.

And you don’t need to resist all temptation.

Here are 3 ways to keep sweets in the house without overeating them…

1 . Identify WHY you’re NOT keeping sweets in the house

Awareness is key and the first step to co-existing in your home with your favorite, more indulgent foods.

Are you not keeping sweets in the house because:

1. You’ll eat the entire pint of ice cream in one sitting?
2. You don’t trust yourself to avoid the food?
3. It’s a trigger food that will initiate a binge on lots of other foods too?

And it can be more than one of these factors or something else altogether.

If you don’t trust that you can have a single serving, explore the why behind it.

2. Stop “Chasing” Your Favorite Foods

Remember the cute guy in your class who wouldn’t give you the time of day? You soooo wanted to talk to him and for him to ask you out. Ahhh he’s so dreamy!

But once he did start talking to you all of the time and was too available, you didn’t have the chase anymore so getting his attention wasn’t as interesting. Essentially, you wanted what you couldn’t have.

The same thing happens with food!

Right now, you’re “chasing” your favorite foods.

Instead, give yourself permission to eat your favorite foods whenever, wherever you want them… including your home!

That’s right… I want you to bring your favorite indulgent foods into your home. And I want you to give yourself permission to eat them.

Here are a few “ground rules…”

1. Portion out the food onto a plate or bowl. You can always have more, if you’d like, but don’t eat it straight from the container.
2. Sit down when you eat this food.
3. Try eating a serving of this food daily as part of a meal or snack.

3. Become habituated to your favorite foods

So many times I have clients tell me that they only keep dark chocolate or stevia-sweetened chocolate chips in the house for when they “have to have something.”

That’s great… but a lot of times my clients don’t even love dark chocolate and would much rather eat milk chocolate.

I say you can regularly keep sweets in your home without overeating them.

The more you keep milk chocolate in your house and give yourself permission to eat it (see #2), the less you’ll feel like you have to eat it all.

The more you serve yourself ice cream as snack when you’re really in the mood, the less likely you’ll feel compelled to devour the entire pint.

The more you include chips as part of your meal, the less you’ll feel like you have to eat the entire jumbo bag.

It sounds counter-intuitive, but it’s called habituation.

Habituation is what happens as you’re repeatedly exposed to a food. The novelty wears off. You don’t want what you can’t have as much.

The more you eat a certain food, the less exciting it is.

So here’s what I want you to do: keep sweets (or your favorite food) in the house and eat it daily.

First of all, make sure you like it as much as you think you do. You may buy a package of Oreos and find out they taste artificial to you and you’d much prefer a chocolate chip cookie. Or you may love it as much as you think you do – they’re both 100% OK!

Second, serve yourself a portion of your favorite indulgent food daily for at least 5 days. You can go back and have another portion if you’d like. How does it feel eating it on day 1? It make take a few servings to feel satisfied. By day 5, it may take less of the same food to feel totally and completely satisfied.

Third, continue to work through your favorite foods one by one so you know you can eat them at any time.

Now since I’ve been doing this work for some time, I know what you may be thinking…

What if I only want to eat cookies and candy and chips?

I promise you, that’s not going to happen. You may eat more indulgent foods at first, but over time you will find a balance. Your body will naturally craving foods with other nutrients, like proteins, healthy fats, fruit, and yes, vegetables!

If this totally seems like something you don’t want to try on your own, I’m here for you! Get on the waitlist for the Nutrition Training Program or schedule a free consultation so I can help you take the first step.

I’m here for you! XO