The reality of a doughnut

Lately, I’ve been trying to pay attention to my habits around food. Here's what I've noticed:

Treats:

I tend to use certain foods as a “treat” for myself. If I’ve had a bad day, I console myself with certain foods. If I’ve been especially “good” (and this tends to focus around discipline or denying myself what I want and doing what’s “right” or “good” instead) I reward myself with certain foods.

Forbidden food:

The foods that I choose as “treats” tend to be the foods that were either deemed ‘bad for you’ when I was kid or that we had only on special occasions. For me, this tends to be Ho Hos, doughnuts, Cheetos, or anything greasy/ fast food/ fried.

This habit of “treating” myself with “bad food” is pretty strong. It’s so strong that even with full awareness of it, I do it anyway. I think that it’s somehow connected to the “reward” part of this whole equation. Here’s what happens:

I have a bad day. As I walk home, I pass a convenience store and consider going in to buy Hohos. Then I remind myself that I’m only doing that to make myself feel better and that, honestly, the Hoho tastes and feels like plastic, sits in my gut, and never feels as good as I’m eating it as I’d hoped it would be. I momentarily feel better because I resisted the temptation of the HoHo. Then I pass another store and tell myself that maybe I can get some Frito chips instead, they’re not as full of saturated fats, the ingredients are just salt and corn… Then I remember again that I’m just trying to console myself and that there are other ways to console myself. So then I keep walking past that convenience store. By the time I pass another convenience store I think “Hey, you’ve denied yourself this twice now. You’ve been so good! You deserve a Hoho!” and I go in reward myself with Zingers, the ultimate in fat and creamy goodness.

Sometimes, I eat all three of them immediately without even feeling how good they taste. Other times I eat them and relish them, telling myself how incredibly creamy and smooth and chocolatey they are when actually, they aren’t. Either way, I never feel better after eating them, neither physically or emotionally, and often end up “treating” myself with something else when I get home.

This weekend, I went through the same process and caved with a cream filled chocolate doughnut at Safeway. I took the first bite, hoping it would be warm, it wasn’t. I tried to feel how smooth the actual doughnut was. It wasn’t. I licked the cream, trying to taste its sweetness and feel it melt in my mouth. Meh, it was basically vanilla pudding. In the end, it was just a doughnut, from Safeway. Not at all worth all the debate, denial, and final ‘giving in’ that I went through in deciding whether or not to eat it.

So then I decided that this was all coming down to expectations. That the reason I was so disappointed in the doughnut was because I had built it up so much- had made it seem like it would be delicious and would make me feel better and that what I really needed to do was actually experience the doughnut for what it had been. So I did. I recalled my experience with the doughnut. The doughnut was dry, I barely tasted the chocolate, the pudding was sweet, but it all felt heavy and greasy in my stomach when I was done. That is the reality of my doughnut.

So I think, that the next time I want to ‘reward’ myself with a doughnut, I need to be realistic about it. I need to say to myself: Yeah, totally, you can have that doughnut. You can eat that mostly dry thing covered in chocolate that makes you sick to your stomach. Because that really is what the doughnut is. It isn’t going to ‘reward’ me for being good or ‘console’ me for having a bad day, it’s just a doughnut. If I’m eating it for that, then I can go ahead. But if I see it as anything else, I’m only going to end up being disappointed and wanting more.