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ZEN & SUGAR

“Life is short, eat dessert first.” – Jacques Torres

I don’t think truer words were ever spoken.  But, unfortunately, for a while now, dessert and sweets in general have been a fear of mine, in the way that someone would be afraid of the dark, or bees…or maybe even clowns.

It started about ½ a year ago when I began two separate journeys: 1) I started what seemed like a very promising new friendship, and 2) I started studying to become a personal trainer. Both of these things had profound effects on the way I viewed my body.

I have never been insanely obese. I have been bigger, but never so much so that I needed, like, an extender for my seatbelt on a plane. But at all my different sizes, one thing had always remained the same: I loved my body.

However, around the time that I started really training, my body started to shift. I began to lose a lot of weight, and I began to see this person in the mirror that I had once fantasized about. I mean, we all know that person, that phantom “us,” who we tell ourselves we’ll start on the road to finding tomorrow, or maybe the day after. Well, I used to fantasize about this person; about reaching this teeny-tiny weight and having all of my problems suddenly disappear. And yet, the scale hit those exact digits and my problems were still there, along with the new addition of wanting to maintain that insanely low weight by any means necessary.

Now, here’s where the new friend comes in. This person was, and is, in many ways, absolutely lovely. However, when it came to food, they could be a bit confusing if you were on the other end of the table. Questions like: “Are you sure you wanna eat that?” “Is that good for you?” “Why are you eating so fast?” came flowing out during all meals. Then they were met with statements like: “Let’s just go eat pizza,” “I want cookies,” and “You’re like…so skinny.” I never knew what to do with myself. I’m from a Jewish and Italian family. We equate food with togetherness, and yet here I was, together with someone, and afraid of ingesting food the “wrong” way.

So, those two things combined to form a very skewed view of myself and of food. I would look in the mirror and see a disgusting, unlovable cow. I would force myself to say “no,” to anything indulgent even on special occasions, or conversely I would gorge myself on these decadent sweets until I felt sick from both the sugar-overload and the self-hatred.

Finally, a trip to Outback Steakhouse with a friend named Steve, ended in me hysterical because I ate dessert and crying at the table in front of our waiter. This made me realize that something needed to change. So, in the way that certain forms of therapy force patients to come face to face with their biggest fears, I decided to create my own therapy by not only meeting, but creating, my fear: dessert.

I mentioned earlier that this process was, and is, exhausting. However, it wasn’t just exhausting to me; my friends and family had to spend countless moments listening to me moan and groan and cry and freak-out about calorie counting and hating myself and asking thousands of times if I looked like I gained weight. And yet, most of them, stuck with me and are continuing to help me as I work through all of this. So, every dessert, every treat is going to be dedicated to one of the many people who have held my hand throughout all of this, and who are constant reminders that life will always have sweetness in it, no matter how much you try to ignore it.

So, get ready for a weekly recipe, funny anecdotes, and maybe some good quotes (we all love a good quote now and again) all coming from a very inexperienced baker, who is ready to feel full again.

Til next time!

D