Are you forever trying to shed a few lbs, but find that it is just not happening for you – despite bringing salads in for lunch and hauling yourself off to yoga classes or weekend morning boot camps?
You might want to start by tidying up your kitchen.
Why, you might ask? What has crumbs and clutter got to do with your love handles and wobbly thighs? Well, according to this
study, a whole lot.
In fact, according to research published in the
Sage Journal of Environment and Behavior, "cluttered and chaotic environments can cause stress, which ultimately leads to over-snacking and consuming more calories."
Having a clean and organized kitchen, however, can help you to make healthier decisions when it comes to snacking.
To reach this conclusion, researchers placed one-half of a group of 98 female undergraduate participants into a cluttered, chaotic kitchen, and the other half in a neat, clean kitchen. Both kitchens had bowls of cookies, crackers, and carrots available for the women.
And guess what? What transpired, was that the women waiting in the cluttered kitchen consumed almost double the number of cookies than the women in the clean kitchen. Separately, but also part of the study, some women were also asked to write about a time where they felt very in-control in their environment, while the other chronicled a time in which they felt very out of control. Upon entering the cluttered kitchen, those who had thought about an out-of-control time in their life consumed roughly 100 more calories than the former group.
"Being in a chaotic environment and feeling out of control is bad for diets," said lead author of the study, Lenny Vartanian. "It seems to lead people to think, ‘Everything else is out of control, so why shouldn’t I be?'" And while there was no explanation given as to why the study focused exclusively on females, Vartanian believes males would behave the same way, given the circumstances.
What do you think, guys? Are YOU more likely to reach for snacks and unhealthy foods when everything around you is chaotic or messy?
