battle of the bulge

Recently I’ve been figuring out just how much my metabolism is slowing down. I think we’ve all been there… And if you haven’t, get your seat belt on because your time is coming. That magical age where you start noticing if you don’t run a couple of miles for every cookie you want to eat, you’ll pay for it by muffin-topping (can that be a verb?) out of your pants.

It’s no secret… You get older and your metabolism slows down. And sometimes? It feels like it just goes ahead and stops altogether.

Total bummer. Gone are the days of the daily breakfast donuts. I have slowly tried to wrap my mind around the fact that I will have to work out for the rest of my life if I don’t want to buy a new wardrobe. And I’ll tell ya, it’s been a rough acquiescence. But I have found what works for me. My own little 30 day slim down. And when I’m on the 30 day slim down, I’m in the zone and I’m in it to win it. And that means no treats. The problem is, if I give myself an inch (and have some treats), I lose control and take 3 feet (and have LOTS of treats). I’m still trying to master portion control. Give me a break… sweets are my weakness…. It takes time to master these things.

But I’m not giving up. Even though sometimes I give in. And fall of the wagon, as it were. That happened a few weeks ago. Every week we have vendor meetings where we see new product. A great concept… and we end up seeing some amazing things. But the most amazing things we saw a couple of weeks ago were the donuts that one of the reps brought in.

I hate when they bring us treats.

Yes, I know, I love me a good donut. That’s the problem. Remember that time I was still trying to master that whole self control thing? Baby steps, people. And I did so well until about 12:30. Then the afternoon lull started to set in and those donuts were yelling at me from the box.

So I had 3. Yeah, I know. 3. Most people have a sweet sensor that kicks in after they’ve had 1 or 2. That same sweet sensor tells them that they will be sick if they eat any more (if they aren’t sick already).

See, now, I don’t have that.

It would seem that I have a stomach of iron and when it comes to sweets? I can definitely hold my own.

My mom told me that I need to get to the point where I can eat one donut and be ok. I told her that at no time in my life have I ever been ok with one donut. Then again, at no time in my life have I worried about my pants ever fitting this tight.

It’s time for change.

But recently I have been so enamored with baking. I have never been like this. Don’t even know where it came from, to be honest. There’s just something about creating a yummy dish and tasting it to see just how well it turned out….

The most recent recipe I had been wanting to try was my Aunt’s pan cookie delight. It had been years since I’d had it and I wanted to give it a go just to remember how yummy they were. So of course, when I got home (on donut Wednesday) I decided that since I was off the wagon, I may as well be really off the wagon and I whipped up a batch of pan cookies.

Yep, just as good as I remember.

And the dough was amazing. After I made them, I ate about 4 of the cookies. And then I stopped. (Even though I could have eaten that whole pan, I stopped.) I decided that eating the entire pan would be so not ok. So I dumped them into the garbage. Now, I know what’s in my garbage. On this particular night it was fairly clean (just some tortilla wrappers and things.) No nasty chicken or gross food… just some wrappers. And though I can’t recall a time when I have actually ever rescued a cookie from the trash and eaten it, the thought did cross my mind that I just MAY be tempted the next morning. (And I didn’t want to fill the cookie pan with water because that would have created a bigger mess). So I brought out the big guns.

I pulled out the bottle of 409 and sprayed the cookies in the trash.

There. Problem solved. Because now there was NO WAY I was going to even think about them after that.

Moral of the story? I’m thinkin I need a travel size bottle of 409…