Bust Bad Food Habits

If you’re ready to tackle your bad food habits, there’s relief at hand. It’s free and takes just a split second.

Here’s the assignment: Next time you are reaching for the chips (or chocolate, or pizza, or whatever) imagine taking a snapshot. End of assignment.

Put a lot of detail into your mental photo: the texture of the shirt you’re wearing, the veins on your hand as you’re reaching out, the packaging details, and how the bag lies on the table. Once you’ve taken the photo, enjoy the chips.

This technique is powerful because it brings attention to what you’re doing. And here’s why having greater awareness of your action pays off: It loosens the addictive grip of your habits. Observation is a way of owning your actions, and this makes change an option.

Whereas if you mindlessly indulge in the formula of “I shouldn’t, but . . .” then there’s a disconnection, a kind of disassociation. For example, you might be eating those chips as a coping mechanism because you’re bored or stressed. Acting from a fuzzy, unaware place reinforces and entrenches our habitual patterns.

On the other hand, if you’ve an honest hunger and chips are the only available food, then you tear open that bag and have at them. There’s no mental confusion, no “shoulds,” and no dissociation; you simply eat.

Note: This technique is also helpful if you suspect you might have a food sensitivity. Take a snapshot while biting into something on your “no” list. Then when telltale symptoms like bloating or eczema follow, take a second photo. If, however, you have a true food allergy, do all that you can do to abstain from that ingredient (and remember your camera).

Thanks to the late teacher and author Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche for this technique of “taking a photograph of a moment.” He quipped, “It’s even better if you use a flashbulb.”