Can You Really Lose Weight While Snacking at Night?

Do you find you just can't resist chocolates? Here's a fascinating experiment. Researchers gave office workers bowls of chocolates and tested 2 things: could they see the chocolates, and how close were they? When the chocolates were in a clear bowl, so people could see them, they ate 2 more chocolates a day than when the bowl was opaque. And when the chocolates were sitting right in front of them on their desk, rather than about 2 metres away, they ate 4 more a day. Simply seeing chocolate and having it within easy reach changed how much they ate. Now, think about your kitchen. What's visible and what's within easy reach? The biscuits sitting on the worktop, The crisps at the front of the cupboard, the chocolate you see every single time that you open the fridge. How many of those things are you eating because you actively decided that you wanted them? And how many are you eating because something in your environment prompted you? Because this is the really interesting bit. Your surroundings can influence what you eat before you've even consciously decided to eat it. If you're someone who finds yourself reaching for snacks every evening and thinking, why do I keep doing this? I want you to stop blaming yourself and start looking at what's around you. Because once you understand how your environment is influencing your behaviour, you can turn the whole thing on its head and start designing your surroundings so that the choices you actually want to make become the easiest ones to do. I'm Sandra Roycroft-Davis, Harley Street behavioural change and weight loss specialist, award-winning creator of the clinically proven Slim Pod Programme, and Sunday Times bestselling author of The Weight's Over: Take Back Control. I've spent many years studying the neuroscience and psychology behind our eating behaviour, and this is one of my favourite examples Of why knowing what to do isn't always the same as doing what you know. And here's another fascinating thing about the chocolate experiment. When the chocolates were close to them, people actually tended to underestimate how many they'd eaten. So, think about that. The environment wasn't just influencing how much they ate, They weren't necessarily fully aware of how much it was influencing them. This is sometimes described as choice architecture, the way the environment around us can influence the choices we make. And once you understand that, you start seeing it everywhere. Supermarkets are great for that. Think about Making a cup of tea in the evening. There's a packet of biscuits sitting on the worktop, you see them, and suddenly you're thinking about biscuits. Now, imagine exactly the same evening, except the biscuits are in the cupboard, you make your tea, and you leave the kitchen. Would you definitely have gone looking for them? Maybe, but maybe not. And that's because so much of our behaviour is influenced by cues. A cue is simply something that prompts a behaviour. You see food, you smell food, you walk into the room where you normally snack, or you sit in the chair where you always have chocolate while watching the television, and your brain starts predicting what normally happens next because it learns through repetition and association. Do something often enough in the same context and the same situation, and those 2 things can become linked. Tea equals biscuit. Sofa equals snack. Friday night, takeaway and wine. Eventually, the cue itself can start triggering the urge. And this is one of the reasons I say so often that knowing what to do isn't the same as doing What you know at all. You can know perfectly well that you don't particularly need a biscuit, but if your brain has spent 20 years practising cup of tea equals biscuit, that's a very well-rehearsed pattern. So, here's the question I want you to start asking. Not, why can't I resist the biscuit? But, what is prompting me to want that biscuit? That's a much more useful question because now we've got something we can actually work with. And this is where we can turn choice architecture into something that's in our favour. The principle is incredibly simple. Make the behaviour you want easier and more obvious, and make the behaviour you don't want a little less obvious. And a little less easy. So, let's start with your kitchen. And please don't throw all the biscuits in the bin. This isn't what this is about. This isn't about banning food, and I don't want any, anything becoming forbidden because that creates a whole different problem. We're simply changing the cue. If biscuits, sweets, or crisps are permanently sitting in your eyeline, put them away. Not banned, not forbidden, just not advertising themselves to your brain every time you walk into the kitchen. Then do the opposite with the things that you like yourself, that you'd like yourself to notice. Put a lovely bowl of fruit somewhere visible. Make the healthier choices the first things you see when you open the fridge. And if you'd like to drink more water, put your bottle somewhere that you can actually see it. On your desk, maybe, instead of the chocolates. You're making the behaviour you want easier to notice and easier to do. And this doesn't only apply to food. If you'd like to go for a walk in the morning, put your trainers by the door the night before and get your clothes ready. You're removing one little bit of friction between thinking, I really should go for a walk, And actually going. These sound like really tiny changes and really tiny things, but that's the point. We're not trying to redesign your entire life overnight. We're making small changes to the environment around the behaviour. Now, there's another area I particularly want you to look at. And if evening snacking is your thing, where does it happen? Is it always on the sofa? Does a particular television programme somehow seem to require chocolate? Is it when you make your evening cup of tea, or the moment you've finally finished everything for the day and sat down? Because sometimes the first cue isn't actually the food, it's the situation. Your brain has learnt, ah, we're on the sofa. This is where we have something sweet. And once you've spotted that, you've got options. You might decide not to keep the snacks in the sitting room, or you might change what you have with your evening drink, or you might simply pause when that familiar urge happens and just ask yourself, am I actually hungry or has something just triggered that habit? That little pause really matters because you're beginning to put some space between the cue and the automatic response. And this is where it connects with everything that I've been talking about throughout this series. Taking back control doesn't mean controlling yourself harder. It means understanding what's actually driving your behaviour. Most people already know that eating a packet of biscuits every single evening probably isn't helping them reach their weight loss or healthy goals. They don't need another person telling them biscuits contain calories or sugar. The much more interesting question is, why do I keep wanting them at a particular moment? And that's the behavioural piece, and it's exactly why SlimPod works on the automatic patterns behind eating and movement. With just 9 minutes of listening a day and subconscious priming, we're helping healthy choices, and that's choosing healthier food, eating less, snacking less, and enjoying moving more, to become increasingly instinctive. Because ultimately, we don't want you standing in the kitchen every night thinking, don't eat the biscuits, don't eat the biscuits, do not eat the biscuits. We want something much more interesting to start happening. And that is, you're saying to yourself, actually, I don't really want the biscuits. And that is the shift that we're after and that we're all about. And whether you're a Slim Podder or not, you can start experimenting with this today. Tonight, walk into your kitchen and look at it as though you've never seen it before. What's immediately visible? What's easiest to grab? Might be the gin. What's at eye level when you open the fridge? And where are the things you'd actually like yourself to choose? Bet you they're hidden away. Then think about your evening routine. Where does the snacking happen? What's happening just before it? What might be acting as the cue? And don't try to fix everything at once. Choosing one thing Move the biscuits, put the fruit out, get your trainers ready. Any one of those. Change one cue and then see what happens. Treat it like an experiment. And I'd love you to tell me in the comments what you discover. What's the cue that you hadn't noticed before? Because once you start seeing your environment through the lens of behaviour, you'll actually start spotting these things everywhere. If you're already a Slim Podder, look out for those moments when an old cue appears and you suddenly realise you responded differently. That's a brilliant win, so write it down. And if you're not a Slim Podder and you'd like some help changing those automatic cues and patterns behind your eating, you can try Slim Pod completely free for 10 days using the link below. It's a clinically proven, medically endorsed, neuroscience-based behavioural change programme designed to help you take back control around food without calorie counting or restrictive diets. And you can use it with or without the jabs too. But tonight, start with your kitchen because perhaps the question was never, why can't I control myself around Snacks. Perhaps the much more useful question is, what is my environment quietly encouraging me to do? Change that, and you might be surprised by what changes with it. See you next time.