I Took a Photo of a Snickers and It Stopped Being a Reward

On Tuesday night I bought a small tube of Pringles, ate half of it on the walk home, and threw the rest away. I'm counting that as a win.

Between the metro and my front door there is exactly one shop still open late. A small Spar. Its main business, as far as I can tell, is sweets, crisps and cold drinks.

A gym evening goes like this: a full working day, then two hours in the gym, then the metro, then that shop with its lights on. By the time I get there, whatever I use for willpower has already been spent twice — once on work, once on the last set. And the shop doesn't look like a shop at that point. It looks like a reward. I've just done something hard; here is a lit room full of things that would be nice. The logic is airtight.

I lost that battle many times. The order changed but the cast didn't: a can of Korean lemon soda, a Snickers, a Mars, a Twix, a Bounty, a small tube of Pringles, in various combinations. Three or four items, instead of the normal dinner already waiting at home.

I have no idea whether two hours in the gym earn you anything, or whether "earned" is a word my brain makes up on the spot, at the Spar door, for the occasion. I suspect the second.

What changed was small and a bit stupid. At some point I started taking a photo of the thing before I ate it, through the app I'm building. Standing in a Spar, photographing a chocolate bar like a rental car I was about to be charged for.

And the Snickers stopped being a reward. Not because anything told me not to eat it, but because what came back was a list, and a list is not a prize. The Pringles came back as salt, a row of E-numbers and potassium, in a tube. That's how it read to me, standing there. Still tasty. But it's hard to call something a reward once you've read it as a label. So I started picking differently.

I haven't won this. It is very pleasant to throw a cheat meal into yourself on the way home instead of the proper dinner on the table. What changed is the count. Three or four things became one. On Tuesday it was one small tube of Pringles, half eaten, half in the bin.

The Spar is still there. So is the gym.

I'm a patient, not a clinician. Nothing here is advice about what to eat after a workout — that's between you and your dietitian or nephrologist. The app I mention shows me what's in the food; what to do with that is still my decision.