One of the most powerful things you can do to eat a diet you know best serves you and your goals is to construct your environment in a way that promotes that way of eating.
For example if you want to eat more fruit and less cookies you can replace the jar of cookies on your counter with a bowl of fresh fruit.
Another example is having quick protein options available all the time in your house so when you are having one of those non-stop busy days you know you can quickly grab what you need and still meet your protein goals.
And finally if you need to drink more water, having a water bottle front and center throughout the day will make it more likely that you will drink more.
These are just a few examples of how you can set up your environment to support your own personal way of eating and there are many more but I think you understand what I mean by constructing your environment.
Of course no matter how hard you work at constructing your environment there is no guarantee that you will actually do these things. However that’s not the point either, instead the idea is we want to make it more likely that you will by making the better choice easier and front and center in your environment.
While our physical environment is very important, these days it’s not just our physical environment we need to be concerned about…our digital environment is just as important!
You might be removing the cookie jar from your counter and replacing it with a bowl of fruit, but what happens when you check your favorite social media app and you see a warm gooey chocolate chip cookie?
Your monkey brain doesn’t know the difference between the cookie sitting on the counter in your kitchen and the digital one that is staring you right in your face when you open your favorite social media app.
To make matters worse, it might not just be cookies, the next picture might be cake, then pizza, then burgers, then pastries, then ooey gooey mac and cheese … all of a sudden you have an intense craving for junk food!
Not only that, but all you have to do is click this button right in the app and in 15 minutes the food you just saw in the picture is at your front door!
Isn’t technology amazing?
Social media plays such a prominent role in our lives these days that researchers have sought to quantify how much of an influence what we see on these apps affects our food decisions.
In a recent study (Exposure to Instagram Junk Food Content Negatively Impacts Mood and Cravings in Young Adults: A Randomized Controlled Trial, 2024) researchers recruited 64 people ages 18-24 and asked them to scroll an Instagram feed composed of either images of junk food or images of animals, architecture, nature, and travel for 15 minutes.
Before and after viewing the Instagram feed participants were asked to fill out a survey with questions relating to cravings, hunger, body image, stress, exhaustion, and sadness. Participants were also asked to rate their desire for fatty, salty, savory, and sweet foods. In addition they were shown images of 5 different foods and rated their desire for each of them. Finally they were asked to build a plate of food from 16 different food items.
One week later researchers asked the same group of people to come back and repeat the experiment except this time they were shown the opposite Instagram feed. Meaning if they were shown the junk food images the first time they were shown the images of animals, architecture, nature and travel during their second visit.
The results of this study are probably not surprising to most people.
When shown the images of junk food the participants indicated they had greater levels of exhaustion, stress, hunger, and sadness.
Cravings were also higher after viewing the junk food Instagram feed. The cravings for pizza and burgers was higher when shown the junk food feed while cravings for a whole grain turkey sandwich or a salad was higher when shown the feed with animals, nature, and travel photos. Finally, the plate the participants constructed after being shown the junk food images was deemed to be “less healthy”.
The key takeaway here is that our digital environment can influence our diet just as much as our physical environment.
You might have done great setting up your physical environment to support your own optimal diet but if you didn’t do the same for your digital environment you might still find yourself struggling trying to adhere to your plan.
In some ways cleaning up your digital environment might be harder than your physical environment because you are not in control of all of it. For example, say you unfollow accounts which are producing images of junk food that might be influencing your mood and food choices. Unfortunately that doesn’t guarantee you still won’t see them, the algorithm can still inject them into your feed.
That is OK though, as always we want to focus on the things we can control and not on what we can’t.
Just because you can’t make your digital environment pristine doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t unfollow the account that is showing you images that are triggering for you, STILL UNFOLLOW THOSE ACCOUNTS! That is going to make the biggest difference because it not only gets those accounts out of your feed, it also tells the algorithm you are not interested in accounts that are similar so it will be less likely to show you similar junk food images.
You also might want to consider not getting recipe ideas from social media.
I know social media can be a great way to discover new recipes and tips and tricks around diet. Believe me I have tons of saved posts across all the social media platforms of recipes I have found over the years and some of them have been game changers for me. However if the cons of finding these posts outweigh the benefits it might not be worth the cost.
If you search for recipe ideas using your favorite diet terms the social media platform isn’t going to show you what you might expect.
For example, I went to Instagram and searched “keto recipes”. Within the first 10 images I saw a picture of a cheesecake, oreos, biscuits, and naan bread. The platform is going to show you the images that get the most likes and views and those are going to be the junk food keto recipes (this is not specific to keto, replace keto with any other diet you want).
If seeing these types of images then triggers cravings you can’t control you might be better off to find your recipes in books and magazines instead.
Another tip I have is avoid scrolling on social media when you are hungry or before you are about to eat.
As we saw in the study, seeing images of junk food before the participants had to construct a plate of food resulted in them making less healthy choices. If you are scrolling social media before taking your lunch break It is more likely you will pick pizza or a burger and fries over the steak and broccoli, or the chicken cobb salad (with the dressing on the side).
My final tip is to give yourself some space.
You might be scrolling and see a couple of junk food images along the way but it might not even register with you. You close the app and put away the phone but suddenly find yourself hungry or have a strong craving that “came out of nowhere”. You may not even realize that as you were zooming through your feed you just saw 10 pictures of junk food, but your brain didn’t miss those images. It saw them, and now it’s responding to them.
This is why it is important to put some space between the time you get the craving and reacting to that craving. Acknowledge you had the feeling, but also acknowledge that the craving may not even be real.
Take 10 minutes to do something else. Do some work, read, go for a walk, go drink some water. If the craving is just due to your brain seeing a bunch of junk food images it will likely pass once your brain is distracted by something more meaningful and it has some time to settle down from the images it just saw.
Our modern environment is not helping us when it comes to benefiting our health. In so many ways it is working against us, so we have a bit of an uphill battle if we want to be healthy. That doesn’t mean it is impossible and it doesn’t mean that you need to live in a cave either. It just means we need to get creative and strategic with how we navigate our modern environment so that it works for our goals instead of against us.
Constructing our digital food environment is just one example of doing this. By unfollowing certain accounts, avoiding using social media before we are about to eat, looking for recipes in books instead of online, and giving yourself some space you can still use social media but in a way that it has less influence on your food decisions throughout the day.
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References
Exposure to Instagram junk food content negatively impacts mood and cravings in young adults: A randomized controlled trial. (2024, January 14). PubMed. Retrieved March 25, 2024, from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38228246/