This is a post about control.
And, more accurately, the fact I don’t have any.
On Friday, my college roommates came to town for a lovely little visit. These girls are family to me and I always want to make sure their tummies are full and the gentle, jolly tingle of a perfect booze buzz is constant. I went to Costco Friday morning and got plenty of goodies for dinner, dessert, apple cider sangria (the best recipe for a fall get together) and breakfast Saturday morning. Some of Hank’s family was stopping by, so I figured it was enough of a crowd to justify Costco portions.
After the last chicken flew the coop Saturday afternoon, I was left facing a few certainties: 1) I really adore those girls, and 2) I had a shit ton of food left over. Of course the salted chocolate-covered caramels and spinach and artichoke dip with parmesan are finding spots to settle in and leave lardy sediments in my thighs, but the bigger concern is the devil temptress known as the Costco cinnamon butter crumb coffee cake.
I want you to, just for a moment, imagine your round cake pan. Mentally pull it from your cabinet. Can you picture it? Now I want you to visualize baking 3 cakes in that pan, piecing them together, topping each cake with balls of butter and sugar, and then pulling up a seat to watch me eat them. All of the cakes. Just me. Every last sinful crumb. That is what happened between the hours of 9:30 am Saturday and 8 pm Sunday night.
I impregnated myself – one forkfull at a time – with a baby made of enriched flour, real butter and refined sugars. Self sabotage is the father and, sadly, it has many, many siblings; all the result of the same pitiful practice. Did you ever see that Sex and the City with Miranda and the chocolate cake? If it had been Sex and the Land of the Super-sized Midwestern American Diet, that would have accurately represented the catastrophe at my crib this weekend.
I think this confirms my suspicion that I am a food addict.
I turned to the top authority on the topic. The Internet. And here is what I found.
8 Symptoms of Food Addiction
(from Authority Nutrition)
1 Cravings despite being full. (yes.)
2 Eat much more than you intended to. (A Costco-sized coffee cake.)
3 Eat until feeling excessively “stuffed”. (lol and yes, I wear stretchy pants on purpose.)
4 Feel guilty afterwards, but do it again soon. (Hate myself. … Don’t waste that!)
5 Making up excuses in your head. (The girls were in town.)
6 Repeated failures at setting rules for yourself. (On Monday, I go paleo. No, Whole30. No, just sugar free.)
7 Hiding your consumption from others. (For sure waited until I was alone with the cake to take it to pound town.)
8 Unable to quit despite physical problems. (I consider a flat tire a physical problem.)
So, here I am. A belly full of regret, a tough Monday morning weigh in waiting for me and a half a container full of salted caramels promising failure all week long. What’s a girl to do? Start over, I suppose.
The number of times I’ve sat and dwelled on this depressing reality is gross. I feel like I’m stuck in a divine sugary quick sand. I get my torso out a tiny bit only to fall in almost to my chin by close of binging business Sunday night.
Admittedly, week days are my come to Jesus reset. Oily fish, leafy greens, flax … they all make the starting lineup on days I have to dress up and be a big girl. But from the time I walk out of the office and declare the weekend “in progress,” I’m hammering the fries, condiments and any and everything that stands still long enough to get doused in chocolate.
I’d say I just need a good strategy and then I’d change my ways. I’d give up my rich, sticky mistress and clean up my ways (and my inflammation). But I would be lying. You see, there’s always a reason to eat the good stuff. Someone brings in bagels for a brainstorm. The folks in your carpool beg for Starbucks. Your kindergartener gets straight “E”s on her report card and wants to celebrate with frozen yogurt. You burn dinner and have to call an audible. And just when you think you’ve come to the end of your excuses, the holidays come along and knock you on your plump ass into a baby pool filled with corn casserole and cheese trays and all of the pies. It’s like the 6th day for the Hungry Caterpillar every damn day for two solid months.
If you have any secrets to success, as always, you can send them my way. In the meantime, if you have a Costco membership, you gotta check out that coffee cake, man. Take it somewhere you can share or somewhere you can hide. Either way, no judgement. But it’s damn good.
