Bit flipping laboratory & Personal website
No sneaky cookies haunt these pages, but whether someone tracks you I do not know. Information flows through many channels, and every action leaves a trace.
In other times and places, food is scarce. People lack access to the nutrients they need to survive and be healthy. I feel grateful that here and now, food is abundant. In theory, I could enjoy eating just enough food. I could enjoy sharing meals with family and friends. I could enjoy the health benefits good nutrition brings. In practice, the draw toward delicious tastes is powerful. Like many people, I sometimes eat too much. Sugar especially offers a strange temporarily escape from stress and sadness.
In younger years I ate chocolate by the bar. I ate ice cream by the carton. I ate it in the morning. I ate it alone at night. Together with aging and a more sedentary lifestyle, my choices began to affect energy level and mood. Eventually they began to affect my weight. Even though I wanted to eat less sugar, I couldn't control myself. Despite willpower and the encouragement of others, the restraint I showed in one moment completely collapsed in some not so distant future moment.
I eventually learned about commitment devices - mechanisms that enable people to make a choice in the present to limit what choices they have in the future. A time release lock is a classic example of a commitment device. It is a lock that requires no key or combination; instead, it opens automatically when a timer expires. Time release locks are often used to control access to cigarettes and addictive prescription medicines. They work well for junk food too.
I buy any junk food I like and can find at an acceptable price. I keep it all in one container. Any container with a hole for the shackle of the lock to slip through would do, but I chose a large repurposed toolbox because it had lots of space. In the morning, I enjoy choosing a reasonable amount of junk food from the container to last me the day. I give myself plenty of leeway about what reasonable means. After all, I only want to avoid overindulgence, not to punish myself. After that I make my commitment by locking the container. I allow myself to eat my chosen junk food any time I want, but I usually eat some after breakfast and the rest after lunch.
Later in the day, I sometimes experiences cravings. I feel upset that the rest my junk food is locked up. When that happens I take a little time to remember how my past self limited the choices I have now because he cared about me, and how in the morning I will get to choose more junk food and then make the same commitment all over again, limiting the choices my next future self will have because I care about him.
The system is not perfect. It's possible to wedge my fingers through the crack in the box and pull out small items. Junk food is sometimes available from other sources throughout the day, and in those moments I have to choose again. Sometimes I choose restraint, and sometimes I choose indulgence. It's still a very good system. It's a good deterrent, and also a reminder to make conscious choices.
It's good to talk about how to make healthy choices, and it's important to celebrate when we make them. I think it's also good to celebrate the unhealthy things we choose to enjoy in moderation along the way. With that in mind, I'll close with a few of my favorite chocolatey snacks.
We are only temporary humans after all, on the same arc from birth to death whether we eat healthy or not. We can't fundamentally change that arc, but we can bend it a little bit, this way or that. We have some small say in the quality of life we experience along the way.
