Create Safe Zones by looking at your life and determining where you can slip-up. Figure out a way to remove whatever is tempting from your direct attention.

The single most important principle when creating your Safe Zones is Out of Sight, Out of Mind. You may notice as you read the strategies how this idea cuts across a lot of them.

This strategy makes use of two powerful ideas:

1.      The harder something is to do the less likely you are to do it.

2.      If something is out of sight then you can’t pay attention to it.

The first idea is pretty self explanatory. Moving a goody to an out of the way location, say on top of your roof, means you are much more likely to stay on your couch when the goody urge hits. It’s too much effort.

The second idea is a little more interesting. Moving food out of sight means you won’t pay attention to it which means you are less likely to eat it. A big part of creating your Safe Zones is being creative about how to focus your attention. You want to focus your attention on what is important and away from what’s unimportant.

You may say to yourself, “I am stronger than that. I can be around anything and not be tempted.” And that is surprisingly true. But remember our discussion on how little slip-ups add up. You don’t have to slip-up often to make a big difference in your weight. If you have a bag of candy bars in your house and you only have one extra candy bar a week, that’s about 4 extra pounds a year just by that one simple slip-up.

Look around your life and determine what threatens your goals and figure out a way to remove it. Get it out of your sight. Get it out of your mind. Create a world in which you do the right thing naturally.