Over the years I have often sometimes chosen to ignore the potential caloric impact (big or small) of certain foods I was ingesting.  I suspect I am not alone in this.  Today I raise my hand and shout out loud that I am a calorie liar!  I need to find accountability because, believe you me, those little itty bitty bites can add up fast.  Or add up slowly.  Insidiously.  Over time.  No more lying to myself.  The nibbling must stop!

Here’s some examples from my lying, cheating past and that I’ve heard from others:

Calories don’t count…

~~~~~

In food samples at the grocery store or wholesale club.

At book club.

When you eat something standing up at the kitchen counter.

If you are just “testing” what you baked or cooked or bought.

When cleaning off your child’s plate.

If you only take half the cookie, brownie, piece of pie.  Even if you later eat the other half.  Still only half.

On your birthday.  Or someone else’s birthday!

It the pizza crust is going to be tossed or the pepperoni got left on the plate.

If you didn’t realize you ate them.

When you sample the sauce.

When the box/bag was almost empty and it was just crumbs.

If no one sees you eating.

If no evidence is left behind.

When you toss part of it into the trash.

With tasting samples of frozen yogurt, gelato, or ice cream before you choose your flavor.

With the crumbs that stick to the cake pan or fall off when frosting.

When the last bit is stuck to the serving dish before you put it in the sink to soak.

Licked off a beater or mixing spoon.  Or a finger.

If it’s the heel of the bread loaf.  Or just the crust.  Or just the insides; no crust.

What lies do you tell or choose to believe?

P.S.  The hardest one for me lately has been the first on the list.  Since I’ve made no trips to Costco in over a week, I’ve had nary a nibble.  And we all know that what happens at book club stays at book club:)      

In my kitchen lives a purple cup.  It’s plastic.  It sits, mostly unused, on a high cabinet shelf with a collection of other plastic cups.  Many are souvenirs.  From sporting events, for example.  Many are much larger.  A few are a bit smaller.  The kind of cheap cups that are good to have around because you never know when they’ll come in handy.

But this particular cup… NOT handy.  Unless one is referring to just how easily it finds its way into my hand and then my hand finds its way into the cup!  Dangerous.  Because of how I’ve so often used it in the past.  Not for drinks.  For that I use a glass.  But for snacks.  The kind that you can’t hold in one’s hand.  The little nibbles.  Like…. cereal.  Or chips.  Or Goldfish crackers.  But mostly cereal.

For months on end the cup sits forgotten.  Like thoughts of those little nibbles themselves.  Maybe because there are no Goldfish in the house.  No chips.  Maybe because I’m eating well and my mind is on track and not thinking (dreaming, obsessing) about my husband’s cereal sitting on its own shelf on the other side of the kitchen but still within waving distance of the purple cup.  Cabinet doors remain closed.  Thoughts of nibbling run to apples and cheese and maybe a single carefully measured serving of nuts.

But then… boom… out of nowhere.  The craving hits.  Pow.  Resistance proves futile.  My mind reaches first for the cereal.  My hand follows.  I read the nutritional information and consider the serving size and how easy it would be to pour into a measuring cup.  Nah!  “Measuring cups are for ninnies,” says the little voice in my head.  “Purple cup.”  “Purple cup.”  “Purple cup.”  No measuring.  Portion control only limited by the size of a plastic cup much larger than the actual recommended serving.  And by how many trips I make back to fill it again.

Have I ever used a different cup?  Maybe.  Surely?  What is it about THIS one?  Yes, I like purple.  (You might have guessed that from my blog design.)  Yes, the cup is a great size to rest comfortable in the crook of my arm when I’m supine on the couch with a book in my hands.  Yes, the rim is just wide enough to allow my whole hand to reach in to the bottom of the cup for every last piece of cereal, although sometimes I raise it to my mouth to get the little crumbs that settle.  But I suspect it is like many things for me connected to food – an association or habit or conditioned response.

Today the cup sits, as it has for the past few weeks.  As it had for months and months on end until a little blip in my willpower last month led me to reach up for it.  To fill it.  and then, to ponder it.  Such is my life as a blogging, musing, yo-yo dieter – finding the most obscure things to ponder and about which to write.  A purple cup?!

And, oddly, or not, sitting here, typing, thinking, has for the very first time made me think that maybe it’s time to say goodbye to the cup.  I know there are others that could be used in its stead.  But, I have just a little notion that maybe if the next time I reached for the cup it wasn’t there, I’d stop, think, rethink, and that would be that.  Maybe.