Sometimes only the real deal will satisfy

I'm not doing a Wednesday Weigh-in this week because I have a feeling it would be too depressing. One of the things I like best about going to Utah is visiting all of my favorite food haunts from back in the days when I lived in Provo and my metabolism was still high. Besides, my father-in-law has Crohn's Disease and can eat hardly any fun food, so I feel like it's my responsibility to give my mother-in-law a good time when we visit by going out to eat with her. At least that's what I tell myself.

Anyway, I tried to restrain myself last week. That meant putting away only two pancakes at our daily pancake breakfasts instead of four or five and supplementing with an apple or a banana. I only got one enchilada at Cafe Rio. Unfortunately, I followed up my enchilada lunch with a cheeseburger and ice cream at the BYU Creamery for dinner. But I was on vacation, right?

On Tuesday morning we went to Krispy Kreme, otherwise known as mecca to my children. A trip to visit the grandparents (either set) just isn't complete until they all stand with sticky hands and faces and watch the donuts go through the waterfall of icing. I recently read on Hungry Girl's website that Krispy Kreme was launching a new line of whole wheat donuts and decided that since it would be impossible to keep myself from partaking of donuts, a whole wheat one would be a good compromise for the original glazed (I had already eaten pancakes, after all).

So I ate one. The whole thing. It was disgusting. Didn't satisfy my craving at all. And then I ate the original glazed I really wanted. Sometimes an imitation won't satisfy.

There are times that a substitute will do the trick. I've been drinking Diet Coke since early childhood and actually much prefer it to regular coke. Low-fat ice cream tastes pretty much the same as regular ice cream (and that from an ice cream afficionado). Cereal with high fiber isn't that much different from Cheerios. Fiber One makes a chocolaty granola bar that tastes a whole lot like the incredibly delicious rice krispy treats my grandma makes (and don't ask me how they do it, because I've seen my grandma's recipe and it's not calorie-friendly by a long shot).

But there are other times when only the real deal will do. Like yesterday, when we were stuck on the airplane for ten hours, I got to the point where I only had an apple and a pack of M&Ms in the diaper bag. The kids were relatively well fed at this point (two of them sharing one of the aforementioned Fiber One bars for their dinner, poor things). Did I go for the healthy, filling apple? Of course not. In stressful times, only chocolate will satisfy. Besides, it was a fun-size bag.

So the moral of the story is, if you want a piece of cheesecake or a bag of Doritos, just bite the bullet and do it. If you don't you may end up eating twice as much to compensate for the craving that went unfulfilled. 

--originally published 3/15/07