Saturday 31 March 2007

Cupcakes on Fire

The great thing about This Thing I’m Doing is that I rarely crave sugar of the non-fruit variety. There has to be a trigger: Reading the food section of a newspaper or seeing cakes on a menu or in a shop.

After my physiotherapy appointment Wednesday morning I stopped in an EAT to buy some water and a banana and spotted some cupcakes. I love cupcakes. When we were old enough to drive, my sister and I used to go to Publix – a Florida supermarket chain with a scrummy (my favorite British English word – scrumptious + yummy) bakery – and buy a six-pack. (I always finished my half; I can’t remember if she did, only that for her it was a struggle.) Sometimes, when I was alone, I’d buy my own six-pack and eat it in the parking lot, feeling almost too sick and lethargic from the buttercream and cake to get out and brush away the telltale crumbs from the seats.

Gazing at the cupcakes, I felt a frisson of fear. As I did with the cookies in January, I decided to wait and see if I still remembered and wanted the cupcake later. Thursday morning I eyed the EAT just off the Strand and decided I couldn’t be bothered. I thought about the cupcake again briefly on Friday. So today when I passed yet another EAT in Knightsbridge I had to go in.

After checking to make sure the white ones were vanilla and not lemon, I ordered one. The cake tasted like… crumbly nothing. The frosting was overly sweet and the texture disappointing. (The chocolate eggs on top also weren’t very good, so I picked them off and threw them out.) Still I was unable to stop myself from finishing it – and from feeling frighteningly, I’ve-just-binged full, even though I hadn’t. I’m trying to resist the urge to skip dinner.

This, for me, is one of the hardest parts of losing weight. In fact, it is the part I’ve never mastered. Exercise. Check. Planning. Check. Eating snacks to avoid getting too hungry. Check. But eating food that I love and used to binge on, and therefore that scares me, I just avoided. I denied myself any cupcakes and cookies and chocolate and brownies, and after several months – and usually a couple of drinks – I’d eat everything I wanted all at once. Though initially I’d get straight back to my diet, it was always the beginning of the end. It might be a month or two before I’d binge again, but then it would be once every two weeks, and then once a week. Then daily – and finally, all day.

It seems strange to say I’ve got to force myself to continue to eat cupcakes (though maybe not the EAT version), but I have to. I know I do.

1 comment:

  1. Do you think you felt compelled to finish it (even though it didn't taste that great) because you aren't allowing yourself that type of food and knew it would be the last cupcake you'd have for a long time?

    ReplyDelete