Put it in a bowl

The next three chapters are the method, and the method is short, because most of it is a cereal bowl.

The bowl. Whatever you'd call a few, pour that into a bowl. A cereal bowl is about right for crisps. A cup or a ramekin for sweets. A small dish for nuts. Not a serving bowl, which is a bag with a rim. The bowl is the unit now, in Geier's sense, and unit bias will work on it exactly as it worked on the bag, which is to say you'll eat the bowl and stop.

The packet back in the cupboard. Before you sit down. Not on the arm of the sofa, not on the coffee table. Cupboard, door closed. The bag on the sofa is a bag within reach, and a bag within reach is a run waiting for the bowl to end. The bag in the cupboard is a trip, and a trip is a decision, and the decision is the partition working.

The clip. On the bag, before it goes back. This kills the staleness objection from chapter 9 and it turns the open bag into a started one. A started bag in a cupboard is tomorrow's bowl, already there.

Seconds allowed, and decided. You can have more. That's the rule that keeps the bowl from becoming a diet. If you finish the bowl and want more, get up, go to the cupboard, and pour another bowl. You'll find, mostly, that you don't, because the wanting was satisfied in the first handful and the getting up is enough of a pause to notice. But the door isn't locked. Nothing is banned. There's just a step between you and the second bowl, and the step is what the bag never gave you.

A bowl you like. This sounds trivial and isn't. A bowl you'd be pleased to eat from, rather than the chipped one at the back, turns the snack into a small thing you've done for yourself rather than a portion you've been rationed. The point of the bowl is that it's yours, and a bowl you chose says so.

Fifteen seconds. That's what the whole thing costs, and it's why chapter 10's fussiness argument doesn't hold. Cupboard, bowl, pour, clip, cupboard, sofa. You were going to the cupboard anyway.

Do it for a week before anything else. Don't change the snack. Don't buy different bags yet. Just the bowl, every time, for a week, and keep the list from chapter 1 going. At the end of the week, count the bottoms. In my expectation the count is zero, and that's the day the willpower story ends.