Eat it looking at it

The bowl sets the amount. This chapter is about the two minutes it takes to eat it, and it's the part that gives you the snack back.

No screen for the snack. Pour the bowl, sit down, and don't turn the programme on until the bowl is finished. Two minutes, perhaps three. Then the screen. Robinson's review is the reason. Eating while distracted raised intake at the time and raised it more at the next meal, and eating that gets remembered lowered it. Two minutes of attention buys both.

Look at the crisps. This sounds absurd and it's the whole technique. Look at the first one before you eat it. Taste it. Notice that it's good, because it is. Notice the fifth. Notice, around the tenth, that the taste has started to flatten, which is Rolls's finding happening in your mouth. That flattening is the signal the bag never let you hear. Now you can hear it, and it says the treat is nearly over.

Finish the bowl. You've served yourself a few. Eat them all, with attention, and don't stop short to prove anything. The bowl is the amount and the amount is fine. The point isn't restraint. It's tasting.

Then the screen. Bowl empty, taste in your mouth, memory of having had crisps intact. Turn the programme on. You'll watch it as a person who's had a snack, rather than a person who's in the middle of one, and the difference is that the hand has nothing to do and knows it.

If you can't manage the screen off. Some evenings the programme's already on and the household won't pause it. Then at least look down. Eat from the bowl with your eyes on the bowl for the first few, and let the screen have the rest of your attention once the bowl's low. Half the attention is better than none, and the bowl still sets the amount.

Two minutes is the whole cost. Not a mindfulness practice, not a ritual. Two minutes of eating crisps while looking at crisps, which is how everyone ate crisps before there was something else to look at.