Your Living Room

In Thinfluence, Dr. Walter Willett describes the television tray as the second-worst piece of furniture you can own. When people eat in front of the television they do not register how much they are eating — and researchers at the University of Birmingham reported they consume more calories across the entire day.

Wansink puts it bluntly in Mindless Eating: as television viewing goes up, weight goes up. People who watch a lot of television exercise less and eat more, and they snack even when they are not hungry. It is a triple threat — it leads you to eat, to not notice how much, and to keep going too long.

If the tray is second worst, the television itself is first. The suggestion is not to throw it out. It is to find out what it is costing you: spend a week logging how much you watch and what you eat while watching.

It can even be turned to your advantage. When Doc Russ started losing weight he made one rearrangement and one rule — the exercise bike went in front of the television, and he could only watch his rented movies while pedalling.

Note also that very little food is stored outside the kitchen in most homes. Wansink expected to find stashes in living rooms and did not, and quickly realized why: once food leaves the kitchen, it gets eaten.

This is a great room for quotes, photographs, and your vision board — but the inspiration only works if you give the images meaning. A family photo becomes wallpaper unless you actively link it to why you are doing this. Move your most motivating images around from time to time, or your brain will stop seeing them.

Whether it is soda cans, chip bags, or bones, you eat less when you can see what you have already eaten. In one of Wansink’s studies, graduate students were given an all-you-can-eat wings party. For half the group the bones were cleared away; for the other half they were left on the table. The group that could see the evidence ate 28% less — and none of them were dieting.

So if you must eat in the living room, eat out of single-serve containers and keep every one of them visible while you decide whether to open another.

Some living rooms now come with beverage coolers, popcorn machines, and snack counters. If you are going to eat in this room, make it as inconvenient as possible: carry in single servings, one at a time, and remove food storage of any kind — candy dishes, cracker baskets, cookie tins.

Fruit and vegetables are the exception. A candy dish here is a disaster; a fruit bowl is a good idea. If the fruit is convenient you might reach for an apple rather than walk to the basement for the cookies. Notice that this does not require you to swear off cookies — only to want them enough to work for them.

Keep water in the room, in a bottle, pitcher, or cooler. A large glass of water may satisfy the urge to have a little something, and the brain routinely confuses thirst with hunger. Get in the habit of drinking before you decide whether you need to eat.

The purpose of a living room is to live. So look around: is it neat or messy, stressful or blissful? Is the entire room built around the television? Is the seating arranged so you could have a face-to-face conversation? Is it decorated with coordinated things, or with the artifacts and photographs of a remarkable life?

Nobody else is in a position to judge that — but you are. Does your living room reflect the way you actually want to live? If not, what would you change first?