There is one fundamental law that governs how we behave within our food environment: The Law of Food Proximity. It’s every bit as indisputable as Newton’s first law of physics. The rule is simple: if you can see it, smell it or reach it, you will eat it.

Changing your emotional relationship with food is essential, but doing this is almost impossible if you don’t change your food environment.

The Law of Food Proximity has as much power to drive weight loss as it does weight gain. You can harness the power of the Law of Food Proximity by keeping ONLY the correct food close at hand.

By doing so you’ll reduce the number of decisions that you have to make about food and preserved your levels of mental resolve. If you are constantly presented with your favourite high-energy foods it’s inevitable that you will slip up in a moment of weakness.

Changing your food environment is about taking the decisions away from you.

Who you spend your time with and how and where you spend your time can determine if you become an Executive Athlete or remain an executive in decline.

When you’re trying to give up incorrect eating habits, you’ll obviously have to give up certain foods. There are also habits you’ll have to give up (and perhaps people as well).

The executives who have the most success are the ones who are willing to change their environment. Their development accelerates when their family at home and colleagues at work support them as they change their food environment.

This fact doesn’t discourage the many from trying. Due to the competition for attention, we get served dumbed-down media messages every day. The quicker the nutritional world agrees on some common ground, the better it will be for the consumer. Until then, here is how to make sense of the noise.

When the pressure is on, the easy to understand answer can have great appeal. The pressure is created by the fail attempts and the abundance of conflicting information out there.

To relieve the anxiety and exert some control you put your faith into the simple approach. Looking for a win, it is easier to follow one rule than to decipher which of the many rules to adopt.

To think that the world of nutrition can be conquered by one sentence is unrealistic.

Vegetarians, gluten-free, vegan, paleo, 5:2, ketogenic, Paleo, intermittent fasting, Atkins and any nutritional movement that has become popular has a defining tenet that is defined by one sentence.

It’s easy to get caught up in the dogmatic rules of nutrition and the never-ending fight over which nutritional camp holds the high ground. Who needs or wants this?

What is the solution? Well, it’s complex.

If I were to give you a simple answer I would be committing the same crime that I have just identified above.

What I know works in one-on-one problem-solving. Mastering your nutrition involves taking a look at the data and basing your decisions on based your progress towards an objective. It could be symptoms like an irritable stomach, fatigue late in the day or the performance of an athletic event.

Or of course, it could be fat loss.

The nutrition rules you should follow need to be determined by what you are trying to achieve and what allows you to progress towards your own objective.

When you have the power to put the goal posts anywhere you want it is unrealistic that one sentence is going to lead you to where you want to go. It’s just not that simple.