How to Build Healthy Food Habits at Work or Home

If you’re struggling to build healthy food habits, that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. It might just mean that the environment around you is setting you up to fail.

I read about this recently in James Clear’s book Atomic Habits. He wrote about a hospital in Massachusetts that wanted to encourage its staff and patients to make better drink choices in the cafeteria. Instead of telling them, “Stop drinking soda—drink water instead!” the hospital repositioned the water bottles near the checkout and around the room to make them more visible. That small environmental change increased water sales by 25.7% and decreased soda sales by 11.4%.

That study is a great reminder that making it easy to access healthier choices can encourage people to make better decisions. I use this trick to help me improve my health (something I’ve struggled with my whole life). At home, I keep healthier snacks on the first shelf of my fridge for easy access while storing “only sometimes” treats out of sight in the pantry. At work, our easy access to fresh fruit encourages me to pick up a banana or apple when I’m hungry. If there were candy bars in our break room, I might pick those instead.

Atomic Habits is a great book to read if you’re looking to make a positive change in your own life or inspire it in your office. Clear focuses on how tiny, incremental changes can lead to transformative results. I loved the environmental design tip, but another valuable strategy Clear shares is “habit stacking,” which involves pairing a new habit with an old, established one to help the new habit stick.

Lex, the marketing specialist behind The FruitGuys’ blogs and emails, does this by keeping her vitamins by her coffee maker. Every morning when she makes her coffee (the established habit) she also takes her vitamins (the new habit). Because she stacked those habits, she never skips the vitamins in her morning routine. So, if you see me doing squats while making coffee in the break room, know it’s just my version of habit stacking!

What do you think: Are there ways you can tweak your environment to support the healthy food habits you want to create, either at work or at home? If you come up with something to try, reply to this email to let me know and keep me posted on how it goes. I’d love to hear your insights.