You little Muffin!

Muffin devil, I should say!

I was in a training session all morning, and the hosts were kind enough to provide a spread of coffee, OJ, muffins, bagels and fruit salad. They were not the ones who prepared the items, so this is not a criticism of them, but of course, the only thing I could eat was the fruit salad and the pineapple was brown, the melons were mushy, and the grapes were dicey as well. I tried to pick through a pathetic pile of fruit to find a few live ones, but it was not meant to be.

The training session lasted three hours, and I was across from the plate of muffins the entire time. Those puppies had just come out of the oven, and they did not share the same fate as the fruit cup. The scent of those fresh muffins wafted up to my nose, and I was obsessing over them throughout the meeting.

There was one little darling in particular, blueberry, that was the most delicious looking muffin I'd ever seen. She was lopsided and her top was still a bit doughy from not quite cooking all the way through - JUST how I love them. She had a few sugar crystals forming a crown a top her golden head, and she was taunting me to consume her.

I abstained, but I was reminded of a quote that I keep seeing everywhere lately, including the very fabulous blog, Dining Well by my sister:

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

-Virginia Woolf

At the beginning of this journey, I did a better job trying to come up with creative ways to make my healthy food as delicious as possible. I think I've gotten lazy with that. Yesterday, I literally choked down my organic yogurt (gag) with my Kashi twig cereal (made with actual twigs, I think). I ate it because it was the right thing to do, and because it is good for me.

There is a fine line between putting too much emphasis on food and the need to enjoy it, and just seeing food as an obligation to fuel our bodies as wisely as possible. That's not true. Those are totally separate. For me, however, it's a fine line. We phatties have to be very careful about this. If we go to one extreme, we end up dissatisfied with our eating choices, although they may be healthy. The other extreme leads to obesity, and that's not such a good thing either.

I've been so busy being active, working, school, house stuff, social life, chores, etc... I have gotten away from making delicious food a priority for me. A quick recipe for weight loss disaster is to bore yourself to tears with food options that you can barely stomach, until you get to the point that all you crave are naughty things because you feel cheated.

I'm going to address this immediately with my meal plan that will soon follow. Dining well is expensive, so I'm going to try to be creative and frugal at the same time. Yes, me - frugal. We'll see how this goes.