We, the weight loss coaches at Vital Body, love Mark Sisson and his approach, guidance, and passion. Below are learnings we have taken from Mark’s article Want to Accelerate Your Results? Set Up Your Environment for Success,” and believe this is a must-read for anyone on their weight loss journey. Take time to action what is suggested, you may have heard it before but how it’s all put together here in this article is simple and solid. Many of these topics we explore in phase 3 of the Ideal Protein Protocol – the one-year program after you reach your goal weight included in your program when you start with Vital Body.

Your environment plays a big role in your ability to reach your weight loss and healthy lifestyle goals.  If you alter your environment, your subconscious mind starts to adopt behaviours and attitudes that are conducive to your success. For example, if you purged all the cookies, bagels, muffins, chips, and cereal from your pantry and replaced these items with fresh fruits and veggies, the food you’re surrounded by begins to change the way you think about yourself.

Not to mention, when you remove the foods that tempt you from the house and replace them with ones that support your goal, you have the best possible chance of succeeding. The same goes for exercise. If your workout gear is tucked away in a back closet, how likely are you to use it?

Your environment influences your decisions, your behaviours, and your attitude. Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behaviour —This truth is from author and habit expert, James Clear. People tend to believe that their healthy habits are a product of motivation, willpower, and effort when in reality, it’s your environment that plays a driving role in your success. Clear says, “If you want to maximize your odds of success, then you need to operate in an environment that accelerates your results rather than hinders them.”

If you want to accelerate your results — whether it’s losing weight, eating nutritiously, getting in shape, or focusing on wellness, we have five tips to help you create an environment that supports your goals.

1. Make What You Want to Do Easy. When something is easy to do, there’s less resistance. That walking program you never started will be much more effective if you set your space up appropriately. Place your running shoes next to your front door, so you’re more likely to lace up and go for a walk when you see them.
2. Make What You Don’t Want to Do Hard. If your brain knows that there are crunchy, salty, starchy, fatty, sweet, sticky, snacky, and probably highly processed foods in the house, you will eat them. Humans are wired to devour these foods. So why even tempt yourself with them at all? Get them out of the house. Or perhaps a better option for you might be to only buy them on special occasions and preferably in smaller quantities.
3. Eliminate Extra Decisions. Decision fatigue is a very real psychological phenomenon that affects a person’s ability to make decisions. The more decisions you need to make, the more fatigued your brain becomes, and the poorer your choices will be. To combat decision fatigue, eliminate unnecessary decisions. You can do this by meal planning, try prepping your lunch ahead of time. Or if you’re trying to incorporate daily activity in your routine, try getting your daily walk out of the way first thing in the morning. 
4. Stack Your Habits. Think about your no-brainer habits: brewing a cup of coffee, taking your shoes off, watching TV, etc. Your brain is very efficient at remembering to do these things and one of the best ways to set your environment up for success by stacking new habits on top of existing ones. You could decide that every morning after you pour your cup of tea, you meditate for 5 minutes. Or you immediately change into your fitness clothes after making your bed in the morning to make sure you get your morning walk-in. To learn more about habit stacking, read our article Weight Loss Tips: Building New Habits. 
5. Surround Yourself with Like-Minded People. Studies show that we reflect the behaviors of the people around us. That means it’s crucial that your people are supportive, inspiring, and most importantly are NOT destructive, negative, or have the tendency to sabotage you. You’re the average of the five people you associate with most, so don’t underestimate the effects of your pessimistic, unambitious, or disorganized friends. Like Tim Ferriss says, “If someone isn’t making you stronger, they’re making you weaker.”

You can read the full article, by Mark Sisson, on how to set your environment up to reach your weight loss goals HERE.

Or, reach out to a Vital Body weight loss coach to discuss how we can support your journey to better health and weight loss.