Finding freedom from potato chips

Once upon a time, I was returning to Auckland after a wonderful week in Whangamata and it was getting late in the day so we stopped for refreshments. Uncharacteristically, I chose potato chips. There was a time when our family regularly bought potato chips in the weekly shop. We knew that potato chips were no good in our regular diet but there they were – ever-present yet providing no nutritional value to my life.

The kicker was that having potato chips in my life caused me to want them on the regular.

We easily become attached to foods that are high in: fat, salt, sugar, feel-good components like caffeine or casein or gluten. It’s not our fault – we’re hard-wired to desire fats and salts, and we react strongly to sugars and feel-good components in foods.

Many years ago, while visiting a friend, I remember thinking what the..?!? when she went to the fridge and pulled out half a candy bar (honestly, who eats half and puts it away). She took one bite and returned it to the fridge. Who even does that?  I'll tell you who: a person who is not overly attached to candy bars.

Part of the problem we have is, "it" is available everywhere and portion sizes have ballooned.

But There is a way to find freedom from potato chips.

1. Start by identifying the habit that is limiting you e.g. potato chips.

2. Observe yourself in that limiting habit.

3. Commit to breaking free.

Make your plan your own. It might include periods of abstaining, reducing the regularity and/or quantity of your intake or choosing new boundaries of when you do and don’t eat a certain food. Personally, the best method I've found is a 3-part process of phasing out the food with more healthy substitutes, abstaining for a lengthy period of time and phasing back in by installing some rules around when I will or won't eat.

If you want to be free of potato chips, you need to stop eating them for a while. This is partly because your gut biome craves what it's fed since it's created from the food that you eat.

It's a big 'ol cycle of

Abstaining can also help with the psychological connection. If you're a potato chip junkie, you might think of potato chips multiple times a day - much more than you'd actually eat them.  Every time you think about potato chips, you're reinforcing the "potato chip" neural pathway, which is rewarded with a flood of feel-good hormones in anticipation.  Abstaining essentially "starves" that neural pathway and the brain "forgets" that potato chips are a way to feel good.  Whatever we don't think about takes more energy to think about so we're less likely to think about it.  

Employing the use of your cerebral cortex (evolved thinking part of your brain - think grown-up decisions) means you can make smart decisions ahead of time. Be willing to want a food and not indulge in the urge. Be willing to feel the feelings that come up when you don’t eat the food. 

It has typically taken me a year of actively avoiding a food to create a new normal where a food is no longer part of my regular diet and I don’t think about it on a regular basis. It doesn’t feel like I’m depriving myself of anything and I’m not having to actively resist the urge. I don’t get up in the morning and think about coffee and I don’t wish for chippies on a Friday afternoon. That frees up my mind to think about other things. If I do have those foods now, I don’t keep thinking about them afterwards because my body and mind has been reset to the new default setting of “life without potato chips” aka freedom from potato chips. And that is gold.

HERE’S THE SQUEEZE

Learning to omit a food from your regular diet builds the skills to give yourself freedom from anything. This idea of shining the spotlight on something as small as potato chips might seem trivial. Consider that by picking just one food, it makes changes more sustainable. There is no ”wagon” to get on then fall off.  Experiencing success with one food will naturally breed curiosity to explore which other food you'd like freedom from.

I freed myself from potato chips about 3 or 4 years ago but I can’t remember exactly because I have very little interest in potato chips now.  If you'd like to experience more freedom from a food, consider how much of that food you'd probably eat in a year and how not eating that much of it would benefit you.  Every little change makes a difference.  

A hui hou / see you in the flow,