Sweet Tooth

Usually I tell people that I’m not a big sweet tooth. I profess that desserts are for the most part not really my thing. Oh sure, I enjoy a bit of candy now and then and who doesn’t like a nice piece of pumpkin pie after Thanksgiving dinner? But I always operated on the assumption that given the choice between having a good dessert and having a good portion of seconds (assuming I liked the meal), I’d always take the seconds.

I’m starting to rethink this conclusion.

For the last three days I’ve been on a reduced carbohydrate diet. The purpose of this exercise is not to debate the relative merits of Atkins (which I’m not doing) or to get into the low-fat versus low-carb flamewar. As it happens I simply wanted to trim some body fat without compromising my protein intake so I could continue to build muscle but lose fat. I’m not even sure this is the best way to do it, but I heard that it was more efficient than a low-fat diet and I’m into efficiency so here we are.

Anyway, for the most part it’s been okay. Breakfast is lots of eggs and a small piece of fruit, I have a small bowl of oatmeal midmorning (like I said, reduced carbs instead of strict Atkins) so I have some energy for my workout, then a protein shake after the gym and some kind of light carb lunch (typically a wrap of some sort). Dinner has been fish or chicken with a few vegetables and then I’ve been having a late evening snack of either more eggs or tuna.

Aside from the first day where I didn’t add up the calories and I about starved myself, it’s been okay. In only three days I’m down 2 pounds with no noticeable loss of strength. I’m optimistic but still need to give it a few more days. By next week I should be able to tell if this is working or if I need to rethink.

Where I’m slowly going insane is that if you note from the menu above, assuming you like those types of foods, it’s a pretty decent selection of foods. So far everything that I’ve made or tried has been quite tasty and aside from some inevitable monotony, I don’t find myself missing the heavy carb diet. Except one thing.

Sugar. When I was planning out this week’s food items, I looked at the desserts and thought, “Man, these are all carbs. Okay, no sweat. I’ll cut these out and kill off half the carbs I’d normally consume right there.” What I mean by that is I had gotten to the point before this little adventure where I’d have one small cookie after each meal. Nothing huge or gluttonous, just something sweet to finish off the palate with a bit of a treat. Two cookies per day is roughly 120-200 calories which I made up for by eating generally low-calorie food and burning about twice that many calories during my workout. Maybe it is obvious now that wasn’t such a great idea.

The problem with trying to reduce carbs is that anything—anything—sweet is probably loaded with sugar, corn syrup and/or caffeine, all of which are either super-carbs or bad for people on high-protein diets. I tried to just do without, I really did. The first day I thought it was just the new diet that I needed to get used to. The second day I thought it must just have gotten to be a habit and I’d have to break it. Yesterday I decided I couldn’t take it and I went and got a low carb candy bar.

Because I haven’t been much of a dessert connoisseur in the past, I don’t spend a lot of time comparing the relative merits of chocolate treats. I’ll try anything once and if I like it, great, if not I’ll pass. The faux-peanut butter cup I consumed last night may actually have tasted like sawdust. I couldn’t tell you. All I know is that the sawdust had something that was vaguely like sugar mixed in with it and that was fine with me. I was quiet for a few moments after I ate it and I could hear, just faintly, the section of my tongue that processes sweet food screaming, “Thank you! Oh, bless you!”

Perhaps I need to redefine my stance on sweets in light of these insights. Obviously they are not the take-em-or-leave-em products I originally thought. So perhaps I’m just incredibly picky about dessert and I’ve applied that generalization to all desserts. For example, I’m not a huge cake fan. There are a select few cakes I really like, and none I could be said to love. Carrot cake, when done right, is pretty good. There’s this Molten Chocolate Lava cake at Chili’s that is right tasty. But your standard run of the mill birthday cake is just… meh. Yet when it comes to donuts, I’m there. I’m even the rare equal-opportunity donut consumer in that I don’t participate in the “classic” vs. “Krispy Kreme” debate. A nice hot KK or a stale Old Fashioned Glazed, I don’t care. Both are good for different reasons. I really like a few pies: The aforementioned pumpkin is a favorite, and my mom makes (cliched as it may sound) a really smokin’ apple pie. French silk pie, when you can actually get it done correctly (which is frustratingly rare) is almost an experience more than just a dessert. But your typical fruit pies (especially cherry) are among those foods that I’ll typically only eat when I feel like I need to in order to be polite.

So okay, I can’t say I’m “Not a Dessert Guy.” But I am a selective dessert guy.

Oh, and I never eat dessert first. That defeats the whole purpose.

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