Living Lean?

I'm feeling pretty silly that this idea has never occurred to me before now. Being into all the bleeding-edge Agile software stuff as I am, I've been familiar with the basics of Lean Manufacturing for a few years now. But for some reason, it never crossed my mind until tonight to try to apply Lean concepts to my everyday life outside a workplace setting.

The specific part of life I'm thinking about is losing weight. My diet is abysmal (though what little pride I have insists that I acknowledge that it's at least somewhat better than the contemporary American norm). I've been mostly fixating lately about finding the right motivation to increase my exercise, to very little success. But tonight I hit upon an idea to help regulate my diet that just might work.

Lean Manufacturing tends itself towards the notion of "Just In Time" - any inventory (or even work) that's not strictly necessary for the current workload is considered waste. (I'm deliberately glossing over the Continuous Improvement aspect, which doesn't strictly apply to my idea.) In the case of my lifestyle and my diet, excess food supplies in my apartment are not just "waste" in the sense that they may go bad, they're also "waste" in the sense that I might consume them when I don't really need them (I.E. overeat).

So here's my idea - when I run myself out of existing supplies, I will only buy enough food for one day, approximately 2000 calories' worth, give or take. This way, when I'm out of food in the apartment, I have two options: go out shopping for more (something which my inertia has historically resisted) or do without, I.E. stick to a quasi-healthy diet. And as with all self-improvement schemes, the key ingredient here is willpower. (Which begs the question: do I have enough?)