Having Your Cake & Your Diet, Too
How to have your cake and stay on your nutrition plan, too.
First have small piece of desert. Small means anything wider than two inches is a no-no. Second enjoy eating it, no guilt, you’ve given yourself permission, so enjoy the food. Your body mass may differ from ours. If you are substantially taller than I am, then size up accordingly, but be honest with yourself. But if you’re more than a foot taller than me then you can handle more cake. Not fair, just true. It takes less calories to run my body than it would if you doubled me in size, think the gas mileage in a bigger car versus a smaller one.
Okay, now we have had cake and enjoyed it. It was good. We were celebrating watching Julie & Julia with friends. The movie is charming, romantic, realistic, and all about food, relationships and what you thought your life would be and what your life really turns out to be. It’s a movie about the wonderful surprises that seem like disasters in the beginning, but in the end are exactly what you need to be the best and happiest you possible. It really is that up-beat a movie. But be warned you will come out of this movie wanting to eat something good, and, or, cook something good. This was a good double date movie, but then we had to go out and get rich deserts to get that craving out of the way. If you let a craving build it just gets worse, give in, a little (this applies only to food other cravings must be weighed on a case by case basis). Jon and I find that eating what we want when we really want it helps us stick to the overall nutrition plan.
We also had cake because the couple we were double dating with was Carri and Pili. I think we were all celebrating Carri being here to go to the movie and eat cake after her car accident earlier this week. We posted a picture of her Jeep, and it looks even worse in person. Carri is all right, wrist still sprained and still doctoring the cuts and chemical burns those from the air bag, but she’s doing well. They’re going car shopping today because the jeep was a total loss, so she needs a new car.
Interestingly Carri and I are the halves of our couples that usually cry the easiest. We’re the tough ones, so it just makes sense that some Hallmark commercials do us in on the tears. Pili and Jon find this amusing or just charming. At Julie & Julia last night it was Jon and Pili who teared up several times. I turned to Jon at the end and said, "Are you crying?"
He nodded, having to take his glasses off to wipe his eyes. I look around Carri and find that Pili is doing the same thing. What the heck? I’ve needed to cry for days, but haven’t let myself. There’s always been something to do, people to take care of, deadlines, pages, no time for tears. I’ve been a rock, then we’re eating brunch just minutes ago and a clip from "Christian the Lion" comes on, and it’s the reunion scene where the almost full grown lion comes running across the open ground in Africa to see the two men who raised him. He not only remembers them, but he hugs them, and does the head rubbing that is a sign of great affection in lions. I started to cry. Don’t know why, but I did. That was what finally let me give up some of the pressure from this last week. Told you, Hallmark commercials, or innocuous TV clips are more likely to make me cry than the usual stuff. I don’t know if Carri has cried this week yet, or if we’re both just trying to maintain. I haven’t asked and I won’t. We’re both too guy for that. But standing there crying about this lion and I know it’s not really the lion at all. But I know that sitting in the movie theater listening to my husband cry softly, I was just happy to have Carri at my side. I couldn’t cry with her there; didn’t want to. Weird?
Back to the deserts we got to celebrate. Here’s how you have your cake and your diet, too.
Gave into craving, satisfied it, now temptation is gone. Back to being good-ish. Jon and I did allow ourselves to have a little more cake before the end.