5 Ways to Rearrange Your Kitchen to Help You Lose Weight

While it’s true that what you eat and how much you exercise has an affect on your weight and how well you are able to reach your weight loss goals, there may be another area you can alter that you are missing: your kitchen!

Use these tips to rearrange your kitchen to set it up for weight loss success!

1. Invest in small appliances – A blender and food processor are key players in your success on a healthy eating plan.  A blender can be used to make smoothies, soups and sauces, while a food processor will allow you to make protein bites, healthy, raw granola bars and quickly chop vegetables and greens.  Once you have mastered these things, you can get creative making pasta sauce, desserts, healthy brownies and even your own crackers!
2. Put it out of sight – If there are things you know you shouldn’t eat – chips, chocolate, crackers and biscuits – hide them in the cupboard and make it harder for you to access them.  Maybe put them in the cupboard up high that you need a stool to get into and that you never open, or on the top shelf behind all of your other pantry items.  If they are hidden and harder to get at, not only will you not see them as soon as you open the door, but the amount of work that it takes to get them may make you rethink whether you should be trying to get them at all . . .
3. Put the fruit and veg at the front of the fridge – If you come home from work starving, and open up the fridge door, you’ll probably just grab the first thing you see.  If you put the healthy foods, like fruit and vegetables at the front, that will be the thing you grab, and you will fill up on fresh, fiber vegetables, and vitamin rich juicy fruits.  Better yet, when you bring your vegetables home from the grocery store, cut them up and store them in a container, making them even more accessible when you open the fridge door.  Orchard fruits like apples, bananas and peaches, can be stored on the table so that you see them when you walk in the door, and tropical fruit, like pineapple and mango stores well cut up in a container in ready to eat pieces!
4. Work for it – Who says you can’t do your exercise in the kitchen?  Squats, upper body strengthening and even cardio (when you’re burning something!) can take place while you’re in the kitchen.  Rearrange your cupboards so that the items you use the most – plates, glasses, mixing bowls and serving utensils – are all in cupboards that make you work to reach them.  Put the plates down low so you have to squat down to get them out, and the cans of legumes and tomatoes up high so that you have to reach up and lift them down.  Likewise, when you fill the fridge, put the veggies in the crisper (at the bottom of the fridge so you can bend down), and the most-used condiments on the bottom shelf of the fridge door.  You might be impressed with how many squats you do during dinner prep!
5. Make it easy for yourself –  We all have the one excuse when it comes to making meals that typically leads us to put it of and get take out again and again and again.  Figure out what it is and find a solution.  If it’s that you always get home late from work and are too tired, try doing slow cooker meals, or doing meal prep on the weekend.  If it’s that you work shift work and aren’t always home for dinner, consider making large batches of food when you are home and then freezing it to take to work with you or to have when you get home.  If you hate chopping up vegetables every night, do it all in one go on the weekend and then just have it all ready and set in freezer bags.  Find the thing that is holding you back, tackle it and set yourself up for success!

By: Laura Peill – (Check out her blog Viand Nutrition & Facebook)