It's tough saying goodbye. Especially to comfort foods and treats we have craved and snacked on for decades. You know the usual suspects: chocolate, cookies, crackers, creme brulee´, a gigantic steak with butter on top, cheese, cheeseburgers, quesadillas, ice cream, french fries, pasta late at night, Nutella, pie, cake, and, well, you get the idea. To many of us, these and other addictive foods are part of the four basic food groups: fast, frozen, junk and spoiled.
We kept promising ourselves that tomorrow we'd stop. Okay, well, maybe the day after tomorrow. But tomorrow never came. And over time, we started adding pounds.
Something had to give. It was time to start closing doors.
At first, it was tough. Really tough. Saying goodbye to old friends is always that way. But we knew better. And as we started to use diet apps for our iPhones like Lose-It!, My Net Diary and Calorie King, we came to realize just how bad comfort foods really were. If you want to lose weight, we can't recommend a diet app for your iPhone, Android or iPad strongly enough. They make logging what you eat a breeze. And in black-and-white, they make it obvious how much calories, fat, cholesterol and carbs lurk inside even the most innocuous comfort foods. What we discovered shocked us.
So we started closing doors and changing habits. Dieting together kept us accountable and gave each of us the support we needed to make the changes we knew were necessary. By visualizing that we were closing doors on foods we once craved, we consigned them to our past. Rita said it well when we reminisced about an incredible creme brulee´ we had in Italy: "You'll never have one that good again, so why settle for a lousy imitation?"
That hit me between the eyes. She was absolutely right. I can still taste that luscious dessert in my memory, and always will. Since I will always remember perfection, why settle for less. Close the door. Consign it to your past.
In its place, we enjoy fresh fruit. To us, the choice is simple: enjoy something healthy like fresh strawberries, blueberries or raspberries. In the summer, find that perfect juicy nectarine. The healthy alternative does not mean having to suffer or live an austere life. Quite the opposite. There is a world of culinary joy in the most simple and healthy of foods.
And those comfort foods we once gorged on? That's in the past. As the weeks, months and now over a year have passed, we no longer miss them. They're memories, not desires. We've closed doors and moved on.
You can too.
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