Google is an amazing company in many ways. Don’t believe me? Go Google it. You know you’ve made it when your company name becomes a verb.
They have something called their People Operations team. At most places it is called an HR department. The mission of the People Operations Team is “find them, grow them, keep them”.
As part of their job, the People Operations team wanted to help improve employees’ health. They started a study they nicknamed “Project M&M”.
Project M&M experimented with where the M&Ms were placed and in what container. They got great results from putting the M&Ms in opaque jars, while putting healthy snacks (figs, pistachios, etc…) in glass jars.
In 7 weeks the New York office (comprised of 2000 people) ate 3.1 million less calories from M&Ms. That is amazing!
You can use some of these same tactics for yourself. Try making two, small changes in your kitchen area.
1. Make healthy snacks visible and readily available
If you have a bowl of your favorite fruits on the counter, vegetable cut up and ready to snack on in your fridge, or other healthy options in plain eye sight and ready to go you are much more likely to make that better choice.
2. Hide the less desirable snacks
I get it. Sometimes a person just needs some chocolate. But if you have a bowl of Hershey’s kisses on your desk in a clear bowl, you will eat 248% more! Put your sweet stash out of sight and in a place where you will have to work to get there. I guarantee it will cut down on your consumption of it, but it will be there for your chocolate emergency.
Try those two changes and see how it works for you!
