Oh Cupcake!

So I am measuring my food.

All of it.

All the time.

1/2 teaspoon of honey in my tea.

1 tablespoon peanut butter on my banana.

85 grams of oven baked fries.

On the bright side I can have an unlimited amount of mustard and red vinegar, yum yum.

So, considering that I am eating well 98.7 percent of the time, I do occasionally treat myself.   This week, for example, was Halloween.  Now, despite walking down aisle upon aisle filled with my favorite mini candies, I decided that the amount of calories in one stinking Kit-Kat were not worth the very small reward.  So I bought candy corn, which I don't like, and therefore didn't eat. 

Instead of chips I toasted the pumpkin seeds from the pumpkins Jim and I carved, mine was clearly better, and put those out for guests to eat.  They are high in calories, but because they're so difficult to eat, I could never have more than a teaspoon at a time. 

I also made low calorie drinks with apple cider and light beer so as not to set back my whole week by drinking alcohol (which some nutritionists refer to as liquid fat). 

So, in order to give myself something to look forward to, I decided that on Halloween day I would allow myself to eat a cupcake.  There is a bakery in Boulder that makes this delicious Oreo cookie cupcake and I have been craving one ever since my birthday in September. 

Now, despite having a test the next day, I made Jim come with me to the bakery to get my cupcake.  We walk downtown.  I can practically taste this cupcake and I just imagine peeling off the wrapper and smelling the dark chocolate and feel the soft, oh so light texture of the cake in my mouth.  Just as I'm imagining this I look up and see that the bakery is closed.

It's pitch black.

They aren't open on Monday.

Not even on Halloween.

Jim, always willing to offer a solution, suggests going to any number of other treat shops downtown.  We even walk into one, which is basically a store of all things chocolate.  They have macaroons and truffles and chocolate cannolis and all sorts of other chocolaty treats.  They even have a very nice cake spinning thingy, like they have in diners, showing off their baked desserts like pumpkin cheesecake and German chocolate cake and chocolate carrot cake. 

The problem is that they all looked like they had about 10 sticks of butter in them.  But the bigger problem was that they weren't my cupcake and therefore would not fulfill my cupcake craving.  If I ate anything from this place all I would do is go straight to the other bakery the next day and then I would have indulged twice!

So today I am going to get my beloved cupcake. 

Now, some people might read this and think, "Silly girl, you shouldn't eat any desserts when you're trying to lose weight."

But I disagree and here is my reason.  Sometimes eating healthy just means knowing when it is worth the amount of calories you're going to be taking in. 

Otherwise, at least in my case, I would eat a million other things to try and distract me from the thing I really wanted and then I've just eaten as many calories as the one thing I wanted would have been.  Also, as nearly everyone knows, making anything off limits just makes you obsess about it that much more.

Does this mean that if you want a hot fudge sundae every day you should eat one?  No.

But it does mean that if you really want something, eat it, but know that you're just going to have to be that much better the rest of the week and work out that much harder too. Which I do. 

I have lost weight.  Am I losing it Biggest Loser fast?  Uh, no.  But it took a while to put this weight on and the slower it comes off the better my chances of keeping it off.  But today, even with my cupcake, I am losing weight and that's a good thing.

Hey, even Tony Horton eats chocolate chip cookies!