Poll:

I am doing a poll because I want to do a research on how candy bowl affects people's efforts to lose weight.

I don't consider a candy bowl at work to be sabotaging my weight loss efforts -- actually, I think one of the biggest saboteurs of our efforts is our own attitude to food. The candy isn't leaping out of the bowl and into our mouths, we make the decision to eat it. As long as we keep looking at other people or food to validate or "sabotage" the choices we make, we struggle -- and it's a hard enough struggle sometimes as it is, without letting something external to us have the power to make our decisions for us, so to speak.

I agree with FL Chickie. The truth is we live in a world where food is readily available and actually, it's everywhere. If we continue to fight the battle by making food our enemy then we're going to lose. Once you start changing how you look at food it becomes much easier to be around tempting treats without feeling the compulsion to lose control.

The logical me would agree with those two posts, the me that's been fighting a (losing) battle with the sweets tin at work for the past three weeks would beg to differ. I have been a good girl and counting the lapses into my calories, but it means something else has to give (and it's usually something healthy)

My old team got rid of the sweets and the biscuits when I announced my new healthy lifestyle in January last year, but my new team are hanging on to the sweets and biscuits (I mean cookies). Which is daft because only one person on the team doesn't have a weight issue! Sheesh!

Well, I look at it this way. Despite how much easier it might be for me to have everything "bad" removed from every possible environment I'm going to be in, I do not expect the world to change for me. I have the power to change how I react to it, though. That includes the goodies at work. We have a vending machine. I also have three co-workers (in an office of four) who order lunch every single day. So every single day is a challenge to say, "No, I brought mine. Oh, I know you're ordering from that restaurant who has the really great melted turkey sandwiches on pretzel bread...or I know you're ordering pizza...or wow, Starbucks? Yeah that sounds great, but I really don't want any. You're buying? Really, wonderful, but...no."

I'm not always a success at saying no, but I don't blame them for sabotaging my efforts. They can't force the food down me.

One suggestion though that might help if the candy bowl is really a big issue...is it possible for you to have your own "goodie bowl" at your desk with things that support your efforts? Maybe sugar-free, low-cal hard candies that provide you the sweet taste and give you something to savor rather than the community candy?

Candy didn't sabotage my efforts to lose weight. I recognized very early that I was susceptible to sugar. Eating any kind of sugary food just made me want more sugary food. A cookie turned into 10 cookies, a pack of M&Ms turned into another trip to the vending machine.

I found out that it was much easier to say "no" to the first cookie than the second cookie. So, I put a bunch of food on a "no" list when I started - fast food, soda, candy, most fried foods, most sugary foods.

If there was candy at work, it didn't bother me since I wasn't eating candy It was a radical approach, but it really worked for me and helped me to kick the sugar addiction that was making me crazy.

Now, at maintenance, candy out of a bowl at work is still on my "no" list - because there isn't a limit how much I could take and I know that I would have troubles eating one piece of candy and then stopping. If I'm going to eat a treat, I stick to something in a single portion, like a fudgy dessert at a restaurant or a scoop of ice cream.

No way! I have TWO candy dishes on my desk at work filled with chocolate and it doesn't tempt me! It actually makes me feel better knowing that I could have it at any time but am making the CHOICE to stay away from it.

We did have someone bring in 4 dozen warm cookies on Friday and that was tough because of the incredible smell, but I didn't cave once - not even for a bite! I just knew that I'd feel far worse having eaten it than I do now knowing that I didn't get to have any.