I don’t know about you but donuts are not something I buy myself.
I don’t crave them. I don’t look at them in a shop and think ‘oooo, I’d love a donut’ or eat my dinner and then think ‘a donut would finish that off nicely’.
In fact, the only time I ever ate donuts or bought donuts, was for birthdays in the large organisations I worked at.
Donuts were the ‘go to’ cake because they were cheap and plentiful but they also have an awful reputation; donuts are fattening and donuts are the devil.
Most slimming clubs I’ve attended (and there's been quite a few) have continued the ‘donuts are bad’ theme. I've often heard the consultants say ‘think of it like a donut’ and the trembling dieter, ashamed and a pound heavier, would immediately resort to bingeing lettuce.
When you first start a diet, enthusiasm is high. There you are, measuring out muesli and counting cashews; the ‘dash’ of milk in your tea being considered like your life depended on it. ‘Would you like a biscuit with that Mavis?’ .. ‘oh I couldn’t possibly, Vera, I’ve got weigh in in 5 days time but thank you’.
Until Friday night comes and it’s time for a treat. It’s time to let loose. It’s time to reward yourself for all that counting and measuring. It’s time to splash the syns/points/donuts like you’ve never splashed before.
And so you pop to the shop and you buy yourself a nice bottle of wine, which is the equivalent of approximately 3 donuts.
Let's pause here for a minute and transform wine into a donut.
So on week 1 of your diet, after measuring anything that goes near your mouth for several days, you pop to the shop and you buy yourself 3 donuts. Imagine.
And if we’re being really honest, you probably not just pick up 3 donuts, it’s probably more like 6. That’s right. You stop and pick up a 6 pack of donuts.
Then, armed with your ‘treat’, you return home and after eating a carefully calculated dinner, you crack open the wine (donuts) and binge with gay abandon, after all you deserve it right?
And let’s be really really honest.
The wine (donut) habit is highly unlikely to occur just one time in a week; it’s probably a few times a week. Which means 2 or 3 BAGS of donuts a week. Every week.
And we wonder why we get fat, stay fat, get fatter and become disillusioned with trying to lose weight.
I never 'counted' wine. Never.
My view was that it was liquid and couldn’t possibly ‘stick’, unlike a donut which would attach itself straight to my already lardy arse.
Wine was a treat. Wine was deserved.
If I lost weight, I drank a bottle. If I put on weight, I drank 2. 'There you go stupid body, that'll learn ya'. I never saw the correlation that it was possibly the wine (and the hangover food) that was making me fat.
I never saw wine as a donut.
Isn't it strange that while slimming clubs happily destroy the reputation of a donut, they strangely promote drinking alcohol like it’s a necessity to staying alive? You rarely hear 'save your points/syns for a donut'. Hell no. But save your points/syns for beverage? Of course!
My dream is that slimming clubs stop promoting alcohol as something acceptable on a calorie controlled diet but that's as likely to happen as me winning the lottery. And I don't play the lottery.
Written by Sober Fish
#Day651