The Free Cake Curse

Has this ever happened to you: you start a healthy eating/exercise plan with gusto, you’re totally stoked, start seeing results, then you’re hit in the face with free cake? Is it just me? Because I’ll tell you what, free cake has been coming at me from every angle.

I know this is some video game reference that I'm not familiar with, but I don't give a shit. It's still funny.

Years ago when I was working down to my lowest weight ever with the very poor plan of eating 1,200 calories a day, I was involved in what I call the Chocolate Cake Incident of 2005. I had been diligently sticking to my calorie counting and elliptical, had been losing weight steadily for months, and I was proud of my success. My best friend and I went to a Bennigan’s for lunch one day, and I ordered a plain veggie burger on a wheat bun with a side of broccoli–bo-ring. But that’s how I was back then, and I didn’t blink an eye about it. It was working and I was sticking to it. My best friend had also just started a medical diet of her own that involved not eating chocolate (the horror!). We were sitting at our table minding our own business probably talking about something absurd like cats in space when a young man in a Bennigan’s uniform approached our table with an enormous slice of chocolate cake.

It looked like this. Exactly like this.

Waiter: Excuse me, ladies, one of my tables ordered this chocolate cake and then decided they didn’t want it. Do you want it? It’s on the house.

Us: Uhhhh… ::nervous glances at each other, profuse sweating, tears welling up:: No. No thank you. We wish. We’re on diets.

Waiter: Really? Are you sure you don’t want it? It’s free!

Us: ::world shattering around our souls:: No. No thank you.

Waiter: All right…

Us: ::sobbing::

My BFF: We’ll give it to our roommate.

Waiter: Great! Here’s a box.

She brought that home to our roommate at the time, who took one or two bites a day until the fifth day when there was still half a slice of cake left in the fridge, and I threatened to murder him in his sleep if he didn’t get rid of it.

That’s a true story, one of the saddest ever told. As I’ve mentioned before, I lost 70 pounds that year, got insanely ill from the lack of nutrients in my diet (can’t do much with 1,200 calories) and ended up being hospitalized. I went back to eating like a “normal” person after that, put some weight back on, started exercising, lost some weight again, gained a little more because of endocrine problems, started seeing a Registered Dietitian, and here I am present day nowhere near my highest ever weight, but still more than I’d like to be. I work out six days a week, I eat cake sometimes, and I mostly just eat well. A few weeks ago my dietitian and I started working with my resting metabolic rate (which I recently had tested) and have been using those numbers with my general calorie intake (which I don’t count, she does) and get some of my endocrine-gained weight off. All’s been well, except…

Well, people keep giving me free cake! I’m cursed! I’m cursed by free cake!

Let’s be clear. I never get free cake when I’m not in an active state of trying to lose weight. If I’m comfortably maintaining, free cake never appears. But when I’m actively losing, measuring, weighing—there’s free cake everywhere.

Now, I say cake, but it’s not always cake. It’s really free dessert. I call it the Free Cake Curse because of that first Bennigan’s incident, which I think was the first time I was ever offered free dessert in my life. But any free confection counts.

Weeks ago when I first started seeing my RD I went out to lunch with some co-workers to a barbecue place and as we were finishing up our meal a girl came around with free samples of their new house-made ice cream. It was a fairly small serving (maybe two ounces) so I had it and it was amazing.

About three weeks ago I was at dinner with my best friend’s parents and our food took a little longer to come out than it should have, so the manager offered us not one, not two, but THREE free desserts for the inconvenience, even though we hadn’t complained. When does that ever happen? You usually have to raise a ruckus to get a free dessert. We got THREE! Two brownie sundaes and a chocolate lava cake. I only took a few bites, but still, free dessert.

This past weekend I went to Dan’s brother’s wedding. I left after the reception and Dan stayed behind to help his brother load up his car with wedding gifts and what not. In the meantime, the caterers loaded up Dan’s car with all of the leftover food. He got home with about 40 chicken breasts, 10 pounds of green beans, five pounds of cornbread, three to-go boxes of salad, and TWO BOXES OF WEDDING CAKE!

By the way, Dan doesn’t eat cake, so it was all for me.

I didn’t know what to do. It was my worst nightmare and my wildest dream come true. I was at a crossroads. The cake and I had a standoff. At first, the cake won. I couldn’t even hide it. The frosting was blue and I looked like I had been making out with a Smurf. The next day when I got home from the gym, the cake and I had another standoff. There were still two boxes, because I hadn’t had THAT much the night before, but I knew it could only be mere hours before the cake was but a memory and a stomachache. I had a few bites, then threw the rest away.

It. Was. Crazy.

This might not sound like a big deal to some people, but this bitch likes her cake. When I was a child I dreamed of the day someone would just walk into my house with two boxes of free cake just for me. As an adult, I had to make the responsible decision and enjoy it in moderation, then send it on its way.

I can only hope that in doing so, the curse has been broken.

(But really, I don’t know if I want the curse to be broken. There’s nothing like free cake.)

Tweaking My Life

I’ll admit it. I’ve been in a healthy-life rut.

It’s one of those situations that just kind of happens and you do know why, but you kind of don’t know why. If you’ve experienced this, you know what I mean.

I was still doing everything right, but my heart just wasn’t in it. I hired a dietitian and have been seeing her regularly. I’ve been doing my workouts as diligently as can be. I was watching what I ate (until a few weeks ago) and I wrote it all down. Then, all of a sudden, I got annoyed. I was doing everything “right” and nothing was happening. I hit a plateau not a month after beginning sessions with the dietitian. Then I GAINED the next week. Then the holidays were impending doom over my head, I had to move, I had to deal with a nightmare former landlord, and I didn’t get scheduled for another dietitian appointment for several weeks because of the holidays and I was just kind of like “fuck this shit.”

This is pretty much how I felt about my body and everyone around me.

It’s not like I completely gave up. I’ve still been going to the gym. I’ve still been eating my fruits and vegetables. My heart really hasn’t been in it though. I haven’t been keeping track of my food, I’ve had way too much sugar, and I just feel so apathetic. The logical thing to do would be to make a New Year’s resolution to get my ass in gear, doubletime it at the gym, cut out all sugars, see the dietitian twice a week, and go broke in the process. Right?

Well, that’s what me from a few years ago might have done. And it probably would have worked for awhile. But in my old age, I just can’t live like that anymore. I started seeing a dietitian specifically because I don’t want to have an all or nothing attitude about living well, but I have a very hard time finding a good middle ground for myself. This doesn’t just apply to healthy living. I can apply it to all facets of my life. To do so, I’ll have to do some tweaking.

Note: Tweaks are not resolutions, because resolutions tend to expire. I’m not in the mood for resolutions, but tweaks will work.

My friend Chiara, presentation extraordinaire, coined the terms “Tweak Your Slides” and “Tweak Your Life.” She is all about tweaking things to make them better, and I love it. It’s a philosophy worth living by, because we can all improve everything all the time. However, I’m tweaking the idea a bit to include moderation into the mix. If I try to tweak without moderation, I’ll just go balls to the wall on that and tweak everything in my life until I don’t recognize it, which will eventually lead to a crash and burn.

This month I’m tweaking my attitude. I tend to be very all or nothing about things, which rarely works out. Here’s what I plan on doing to get started:

1. Tweak my attitude about food: I have to remember that being 100% perfect is not realistic. Yes, I can eat clean and wholesome, but if I stray say 15% of the time I’m not actually going to turn into Jabba the Hutt, which is how I always feel. And once you feel like Jabba the Hutt, you find it hard to care about anything, which then leads to the other extreme, in which I just eat everything because it’s there.

2. Tweak my attitude about exercise: My dietitian wants me to drop a few gym workouts in favor of just walking. I hear her and understand why she’s asking me to do that, but every week I find myself sticking with my own routine instead of taking her suggestion. It’s stupid for me to pay someone for advice I’m not using. I don’t know why I have such a hard time dropping classes. I guess it’s because I feel like my attendance is expected in classes (instructors at the gym totally know me and know when I come) but no one is waiting for me at the walking trail or on the treadmill. To tweak this attitude and create a schedule in which moderation is key, I’ll walk three days a week. That will make my workout week a lot less extreme and should introduce a sense of balance.

3. Tweak my attitude about rest: I don’t know what my problem is, but I feel devastatingly guilty if I spend a day just hanging out at home and relaxing instead of “getting stuff done.” For me, getting stuff done doesn’t even necessarily mean accomplishing anything. Sometimes it just means running a few errands I don’t really need to do and cleaning things that aren’t dirty. I just feel guilty when I don’t do anything. I need to remind myself that relaxing and taking a break is doing something and that it leads to a more productive work week. I’m not a bad person if I watch movies and surf the Internet for the bulk of a day.

So, this month I’m going all on demolishing the all or nothing sensibility I tend to have and tweak by moderating. Going 100% or not at all just doesn’t work for me.

 

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