Unexpected Nugget #3: “Lite” food is not the answer.
Is that booing that I hear in the background? Of course it
is. We love and depend on “lite” food. There is an entire industry devoted to
telling us that we can have chocolate cake, not only have it but eat it, and
stay lithe and slender at the same time. That’s possible because the chocolate
cake is not the bad old version of our childhood, full of sugar and butter,
eggs (yolks included!) and full-fat chocolate. No, it is “lite” chocolate cake,
made with calorie-free sweeteners and other ingredients with hard-to-pronounce
names, simulating the chocolate cake we crave at a mere 100 calories per
serving!
Now, I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, it’s comforting
to know there’s an alternative that doesn’t break the calorie bank for those
times when all resolve fails and nothing but chocolate will do. On the other
hand, I can never seem to eat just one 100-calorie serving of anything. I also have
to wonder about the healthiness of all those ingredients with names right out
of chemistry class, methyl-ethyl-this-will-give-you-cancer-or-at-least-gas. My main
concern, however, is a philosophical one:
Does eating “lite” versions of the foods that made me fat
keep me stuck in a mind rut that makes it harder for me to keep from getting
fat again?
It’s this simple: eating a sweet and juicy orange, or a
crisp and crunchy carrot, will never be satisfying as long as the ghost of
chocolate cake haunts me. Though “lite” chocolate cake may be an improvement,
calorie-wise at least, over authentic chocolate cake, it keeps the idea firmly
planted in my mind that the way I am eating now is inferior to the way I used
to eat. It is a poor second, a grim and unfortunate accommodation that I’ve had
to make out of biological necessity. Since I can no longer eat “real” chocolate
cake, I find myself stuck with “lite” (read “fake”) chocolate cake. This frame
of mind leaves me vulnerable to feelings of self-pity. It is a psychological
state in which I can wallow in the unfairness of my genetics. It’s the place
where it’s easy to say: F*ck it. Where’s that cake?
Here’s what I say. Desensitize your taste buds to all of your
guilty pleasures. Do it until chocolate cake, real or fake, is such a distant
memory that the sweetness of an orange makes you woozy and a carrot seems the cat’s
meow. This might seem like a harsh prescription, but once you’ve exorcised your
food demons, it’s much easier than you think. You think it’s hard because the
Food Powers That Be have brainwashed you into believing that a life without
cake is so onerous that even “lite” cake is better than no cake at all.
The truth of the matter is that life without cake can be
pretty darned delicious.
So you don't eat cake any more? Those neuropathways in my brain have not permanently changed yet. I still want cake. After I have it, I mostly want to go back to my delicious healthier choices, because I feel so much better after I eat them. But I still want the cake.
ReplyDeleteI do eat cake or other sweet things occasionally, but I find I'm happier when I don't because the more I eat them, the more I want them. The reverse is true too, the less I eat them, the less I want them.
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