When traveling and staying in a hotel, dieters may be tempted by the treats in their hotel rooms. Hotels are smart – they often leave a basket of snacks in full view so they can tempt people to spend money (Day 32 of The Beck Diet Solution). But dieters can take the basket and put it in a closet or cover it with a towel and develop a rule to always carry their own treats with them instead of eating anything from a minibar, basket, or snack machine. If they’re hungry, it’s important for dieters to remember that they’ll have their next planned meal/snack within a few hours or have breakfast the next morning (Day 16 of The Beck Diet Solution). We ask dieters to imagine if this were thirty years ago when there was no food in hotel rooms. What would they have done then?
Our dieter, Jason, had to apply this rule in a different way. He travels for business once or twice a month and there is always an abundance of snack food at the back of the meeting room. He often feels either bored or somewhat stressed during meetings and it is particularly difficult for him to resist the high fat, high sugar foods. Jasonknows that eating these snacks is contrary to his plan, that he will soon feel weak and guilty, and that he could gain weight, he still has a hard time resisting in the moment. Jason needs to read the advantages of losing weight just before each meeting. He’s also decided to make a rule for himself that he will not eat any snack food provided at meetings. It’s helpful for him to realize that he’s not alone—not everyone at the meeting eats these snacks between meals. Just like the minibar, he can’t give himself a choice about this or he will struggle every single time. As soon as Jason makes this rule and practices following it ten times in a row, it will become so much easier for him to resist and stick to his plan.