These days, we’re all anxious about the coronavirus and with good reason. I used to be anxious about things for no good reason like missing a train, bouncing a check, telling the boss to shove the job, but who cares about that now. We’re all trying to stay healthy and alive. Still, there’s one thing that keeps me anxious while I obey the stay-at-home rule. It sounds petty, like a Kardashian whining about a lost diamond flip-flop, but I toss and turn night-after-night because I’m overwhelmed with cake fear.
Why do I have cake fear? Because cake cures my anxiety and I fear I won’t have enough cake to get me through these scary stay-at-home times. Therefore, I’m staying-at-home right next to my refrigerator.
I’m having a ‘cakeapolypse’. (cake-op-o-lypse)
When I was single, I used to spend lonely nights watching TV with Little Debbie’s Swiss Rolls. Every channel-change gave me impetus to open a new cellophane pack of the chocolate concoctions and I inhaled them like a Dustbuster sucking change from under the couch cushions. I gained 30 pounds and spent a year in a weight loss group in Manhattan losing every pound by writing down what I ate and counting calories. And although that weight loss program cured me from eating every meal like it was my last, it didn’t break my desire, my compulsion, my lust for cake.
Tall-ish, I hover somewhere between a big-boned gal on the low end of the scale, and a not-so-fatso when I’m tipping the scale. These days, I try to stick with a weight loss program and daily exercise to keep the flab from piling on my hips. I measure my portions and don’t take second trips to the stove when I clean my plate. But if I don’t eat a piece of cake — or something decadently sweet — for dessert, I feel naked and unfulfilled like a jelly donut without its jelly and powdered sugar.
I recently read an article on guardian.com about eating during stressful times, and it quoted Mary Dallman, a stress and physiology expert at the University of California. She said “sweet foods actually ameliorate the effects of stress” but not without side-effects. “Habitual relief of life’s discomforts using this means inevitably leads to obesity”.
They call it comfort food for a reason. Not only does it taste good, it conjures up feelings of happier times, like when you could leave the house without having to cover your mouth and hands for protection. When you could hug friends ‘hello’ and hold someone’s hand when they needed your touch. Happier times that were not so long ago. And now, we all live in fear of catching a virus that could potentially end our lives. Of course, we want comfort, and if we get it from a piece of cake, so be it.
Eating for comfort is in some way trying to address a feeling that has nothing to do with hunger. If I need comfort, food doesn’t really satisfy that need. It’s a momentary distraction because the comfort is not there. The food is a detour from reality. I should know. I’ve taken that detour a million times, and always ended up in ‘Flabville’.
Pondering how to reconcile my flab fear with my cake fear, I remember the advice I received from a former fatty who lost weight when she fell in love. Instead of cake orgasms, she said why not try the real thing? Hmmm …
Activities are a really good way to replace that reach for comfort food. Get out the sewing machine and make an outfit a la Project Runway. Take mood pics of your cat or dog. Write a blog about your food obsessions.
Hey, it works!
Next week: The Peeps Show
No doubt about it, chocolate is magic! Great one, Sally!