The Camera Diet is a concept that comes from Jeff Hawkins's book On Intelligence. In the book, Hawkins states that the operation of the brain resembles the execution of scripts. An example script is "driving home from work". While one executes the script and drives home, they may be thinking about other things. Similarly, there are scripts for eating out. One can go out to eat and talk to one's friend at the same time.

While eating out is scripted, one does not have good control over the scripted activity — it is always the same process. Therefore, one who eats with poor etiquette while eating out will always eat badly. On the other hand, Hawkins claims a script is not executed if there is no match between the script and the activity you are doing, allowing the possibility that one might have separate scripts for "eating out" and "eating at home". As another example, if one had never taken a bus home and then rode a bus for the first time, there would be no automatic script — one would need to think carefully about the ride and watch for one's street.

Hawkins argues that people who wish to diet need to have a way to keep their bad eating scripts from being executed — one could not continue to execute old eating scripts and successfully lose weight. To do so, one would need to change the way one eats so as to not match any automatic scripts. One would then be forced to think about the eating activity and try to make better food selections.

Hawkins suggests starting by making a single change to one's eating, which would cause the eating to become less automatic. Instead of eating in a way that would match old eating scripts, Hawkins suggests doing a "photo shoot" along with eating; taking a photograph of what one is about to eat. As none of the old eating scripts would contain photo shoots, they would not match the new situation.