At some point in my life it was decided that no meal was complete without something sweet to finish it off. While this is certainly not the one and only cause of my lifelong struggle with weight, it didn’t help.
I was ten years old when my pediatrician put me on my first official diet. He had always been nagging me about my weight and I loathed going to the doctor, and still dread it today because of that obligatory stop at the scary scale. The previous year he had detected a heart murmur and put me through a series of tests at the hospital. I thought I was going to die. I wanted to die after he pointed out my unacceptable weight for the thousandth time. My mother and I left his office with a list of acceptable foods and recommendations for exercise. He had gone over the Food Pyramid with me, but I already knew about the food groups from school.
It was summer vacation. I slept in. I got up and took a short walk. It was 11:00 so I decided to go right to lunch. I followed the Food Pyramid and poured a glass of milk, fixed a fat free ham sandwich, dropped a few carrot sticks on my plate, and sliced an apple. The meal didn’t look complete. Where was the ever important Dessert Group? I added a couple Snackwells sandwich cookies. That was the beginning of the end of my first “diet.”
For the rest of my life, no meal felt complete without dessert. I couldn’t understand people that didn’t like chocolate, that could say no to cheesecake. These foods were more important to me than any hamburger, pizza or bowl of pasta.
This has been one of my greatest challenges over the last year – eliminating sweets. I had to train myself to consider a meal complete without a dessert at the end. I started out by having fruit at the end, or maybe a handful of raisins or dried cranberries. In the beginning, when it was hardest, that only made me want something chocolate and creamy even more.
If I make a bowl of trail mix – almonds, walnuts, raisins, cranberries, and five chocolate chips for a treat – I just want to gorge myself on candy bars and brownies. Those few chocolate chips light a fire in my taste buds and I want more, more, more. I’ve had to remind myself that dessert is a once in a while treat. It’s for emergency situations. It’s something I simply cannot have at the end of each meal, or even once a week. Some people can, I can’t.
The bright side? Not having dessert with every single meal or a few times a week makes it more of a treat. Now, when I do indulge in a gooey cookie or creamy cheesecake, it’s a slice of heaven. Sure, it’s sometimes impossible not to reach for another one or five, but I’m still learning the proper food groups.
