Weight Watchers sends me e-mails with information: mostly tips, recipes and positive reinforcement for the journey. Usually I skim them and discard, but this time a recipe for gingerbread men caught my eye. They were made with whole-wheat flour and were low in fat, and for 2 points you could eat 3 cookies, albeit small cookies, but 3 cookies nonetheless – just a little something small and sweet to go with an afternoon cup of tea, and festive for the holidays. I figured if I didn’t ice them I’d save a few more calories, so I whipped up a batch. The recipe makes 48 cookies, but I cut them into stars instead of gingerbread men and made about 65 cookies. Hmm, smaller cookies mean I can eat more than 3, right? Technically yes, but not 8. And not multiple times a day.

The week prior our WW meeting topic was “Is this food worthy of me?” So in Sunday’s class when Maggie asked, “Did you ask your food if it was worthy of you?” I told her, “The food lied.” I gained a quarter of a pound on what were supposed to be WW approved cookies.

I am well aware that anything you eat enough of will eventually be fattening. You’ll gain weight if you eat a bushel of apples OR a quart of ice cream. Portions must be controlled. So we discussed how to control said portions by not actually baking the whole batch of cookies at once, pre-portioning them into Baggies with a serving in each, and someone even suggested hiding them. A lovely young woman who looks great after losing 40+ pounds shouted out, “Oh, no. You can lose a gift card in your house but you’ll know exactly where you put that cookie.”

She’s right. And I know how to do all those things, just like I knew exactly what I was doing when I ate the cookies. Nobody forced me to do it. I wanted the *&^%$# cookies! So sometimes you just have to eat a cookie because it’s Christmas and you want one, and sometimes you just have to not make the batch and ban them from the house. So my goal through the little that is left of this year is to be as good as I can without feeling deprived, and get back to the nose-to-the-grindstone-weight-loss after the holidays.

Wish me luck. I think I’ll go have a cookie.

Deborah