Cookies and me and mindless eating

In the beginning, there were cookies. It all started when I was a wee thing about one year old.

I was not interested in walking, and my father had an ingenious idea about how to get me off my butt and on my feet. Yep, folks, my dad stood a short distance away from me and held out a cookie. Now, I ask you, how smart is that? I needn't tell you that his plan worked splendidly, and I got up off all fours and toddled over to that cookie so fast it would make Linda Blair's head spin. My dad loved telling me that story.

Ever since that definitive moment, cookies have led me astray. I have branched out, too, over the years, and have probably sampled every dessert known to mankind. As much as I love fancy sweets of all sorts, I will admit that chocolate chip cookies hot out of the oven are my greatest weakness. Ever. I could rewrite FDR's famous Great Depression era speech and say, "We have nothing to fear but cookies themselves."

Seriously, I don't know how anyone can pass up a cookie! My son and daughter, who take after their mama, will gobble up the first post-oven batch like sharks in a feeding frenzy. On the other hand, my son has a friend (a skinny friend) who is cookie resistant. On a few occasions, the friend, Cameron, has come over to our house just when I have pulled a batch of chocolate chip yummies out of the oven, and when I offered him some he has simply said, "No, thanks, I'm good." He's good? How can he be good? How can he turn down a freshly baked cookie? I would love to know his secret. I asked my son once, how can Cameron turn down a warm cookie, and my son replied, "Cameron only likes bland food."

Which gives me an idea: perhaps I should write the Bland Food Diet. Would that be a best seller? Would a bland diet rival Atkins or South Beach? I seriously doubt it. I know another woman who confessed that though she could live without sweets, (hard to believe, I know) she could not be left alone with bread and butter. We all have our food nemesis, it seems.

I was talking to another friend of mine recently who is also in the cookie-craze category. I instantly recognized a kindred spirit when she admitted, "I can't have just one." My kind of woman! We sighed together as we agreed that it is so much fun to bake cookies with our children, but once made, they are like fat modules piled on a plate.

I have painfully, regretfully come to the notion that it is healthy neither to deprive oneself nor indulge oneself. Here comes that pesky concept -- moderation. If we can say hello to our little friends (I mean cookies, here) and enjoy one, or two, and then move on, then we can retrain our cravings. The trick is to eat slowly and "experience" the taste -- or so I have been told.

One tidbit I read once sticks with me when I am about to consume a goody too fast. Imagine that you are asleep. When you wake up you are told that in your sleep you ate the most delicious treat imaginable. Naturally, you would be disappointed that you didn't get to experience that taste, and you are only left with the calories. Technically speaking, when we eat mindlessly we are indeed sleep eating.

I am trying harder this year to pay attention and slow down. Smell the roses and taste the cookies. Weirdly enough, it does make a difference when I sit down with whatever it is I am about to eat and enjoy it. Food tastes better. It does work. It does take effort. And it especially makes me wonder what would have happened if my dad had held up some pureed spinach on a spoon to get me to walk those many years ago.