I don’t know about you but donuts are not something I buy myself. I don’t crave them. I don’t look at them in a shop and think ‘oooo, I’d love a donut’ or eat my dinner and then think ‘a donut would finish that off nicely’.
In fact, the only time I ever ate donuts or bought donuts, was for birthdays in the large organisations I worked at. Donuts were the ‘go to’ cake because they were cheap and plentiful but they also have an awful reputation; donuts are fattening and donuts are the devil.
Most slimming clubs I’ve attended (and there’s been quite a few) have continued the ‘donuts are bad’ theme. I’ve often heard the consultants say ‘think of it like a donut’ and the trembling dieter, ashamed and a pound heavier, would immediately resort to bingeing lettuce.
When you first start a diet, enthusiasm is high. There you are, measuring out muesli and counting cashews; the ‘dash’ of milk in your tea being considered like your life depended on it. ‘Would you like a biscuit with that Mavis?’ .. ‘oh I couldn’t possibly, Vera, I’ve got weigh in in 5 days time but thank you’.
Until Friday night comes and it’s time for a treat. It’s time to let loose. It’s time to reward yourself for all that counting and measuring. It’s time to splash the syns/points/donuts like you’ve never splashed before.
And so you pop to the shop and you buy yourself a nice bottle of wine, which is the equivalent of approximately 3 donuts.
Let’s pause here for a minute and transform wine into a donut.
So on week 1 of your diet, after measuring anything that goes near your mouth for several days, you pop to the shop and you buy yourself 3 donuts. Imagine.
And if we’re being really honest, you probably not just pick up 3 donuts, it’s probably more like 6. That’s right. You stop and pick up a 6 pack of donuts.
Then, armed with your ‘treat’, you return home and after eating a carefully calculated dinner, you crack open the wine (donuts) and binge with gay abandon, after all you deserve it right?
And let’s be really really honest. The wine (donut) habit is highly unlikely to occur just one time in a week; it’s probably a few times a week. Which means 2 or 3 BAGS of donuts a week. Every week.
And we wonder why we get fat, stay fat, get fatter and become disillusioned with trying to lose weight.
I never ‘counted’ wine. Never. My view was that it was liquid and couldn’t possibly ‘stick’, unlike a donut which would attach itself straight to my already lardy arse. Wine was a treat. Wine was deserved. If I lost weight, I drank a bottle. If I put on weight, I drank 2. ‘There you go stupid body, that’ll learn ya’.
I never saw the correlation that it was possibly the wine (and the hangover food) that was making me fat. I never saw wine as a donut.
Isn’t it strange that while slimming clubs happily destroy the reputation of a donut, they strangely promote drinking alcohol like it’s a necessity to staying alive? You rarely hear ‘save your points/syns for a donut’. Hell no. But save your points/syns for beverage? Of course!
My dream is that slimming clubs stop promoting alcohol as something acceptable on a calorie controlled diet but that’s as likely to happen as me winning the lottery.
And I don’t play the lottery.
Written by Sober Fish
#Day651
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Spot on! Thinking back to the countless diets I’ve done over the years, I always treated wine as a reward or, even worse, the necessity that had to be retained at all costs. On a 1250 calories a day diet, I would dedicate time to carefully working out what foods/meals could be skipped to make room for a couple of glasses of wine (which, of course, never was just a couple!) xx
Very pithy Dawn, I’d also like to see an end to the glamorisation of alcohol, the T shirts with Prosecco Princess and the mugs with this might be coffee or vodka etc. Even notebooks for goodness sake.
I have no sober friends, so you are the first person I have come across that thinks a little like me! Keep it up.
This is so true. They often ‘joke’ at my SW class that it’s like an AA meeting. All I hear is how many Jack Daniels and diet coke I could have had instead of whatever I spent my syns on! There is very much a culture of saving all your syns for booze no matter what. My friend has been very supportive in my sobriety and its made her question her intake and be more mindful (although she actually is one of those rare people that can truly moderate, she just can’t moderate bread and cheese!!) she even commented the other week about how much our leader goes on about alcohol every meeting. Depressing. However there has recently been a few people talking about Becks Blue as a low syn beer alternative so there maybe a change occuring?
Two photos appeared on my book group What’sApp this week: one of us all at last Thursday’s meeting and one us all 13 years ago. In both, I’m the only one holding a glass of wine. And, generally speaking, I’m the only one who consistently gets drunk. I too have tried cutting down and making myself all sorts of good-intentions promises while wallowing in hangover-induced self loathing. Something feels different now though. I think I’ve really had enough. I too attend “fat club”, and take all my syns in liquid form.