Cupcakes!!!

If you know me, then it is no secret that I love cupcakes. For a season, I would go to the local grocer and buy one cupcake almost every day. One day I thought I would be smart and just buy the 6 pack to eat one cupcake a day for 6 days. I ended up eating all 6 in one day. I confess…this has been my most difficult part of trying to eat healthy. I have a major sweet tooth that targets mostly cupcakes.

While on one of my trips to San Francisco, CA, I visited the major mall downtown which had an oasis of great food within it. Bristol farms was also in that mall. I had never been there before, but they seemed to be a grocery store of sorts that sold both organic and healthier options. Except for certain items in the bakery…which had the most beautiful array of cupcakes you can imagine (picture above). There were red velvet cupcakes, chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes, fudge brownie cupcakes, mint chocolate chip cupcakes, key lime cupcakes, strawberry cheesecake cupcakes, fudge brownie cupcakes, raspberry lemon cupcakes, strawberry cupcakes…the list goes on. I was in a wonderland heaven….of cupcakes. Now, from a nutritional standpoint, these cupcakes were gigantic and had to have more than 700 (probably 1000) calories in each. In addition, I suspect the fat and sugar in them was excessive also. But what could I do when they looked so good and this was my weakness? The only thing to do was to…..eat a cupcake. I had 1 almost every time I went to San Francisco (about 3-4 times). My favorite was the strawberry and red velvet. This seems to go against everything I like to teach, but one thing I have found is that sometimes we can give into our cravings if we follow some simple rules.

5 rules to follow in order for you to EAT THAT CUPCAKE (OR ANY SWEET FOR THAT MATTER):

1.       Eat light a majority of the day so you may indulge in that cupcake. Before I ate a big cupcake, I always had light meals like salads and water.

2.       Take the icing off. My cupcakes came with a lot of icing on top of them. Oftentimes, I took a majority of it off. A lot of the sugar, fat, and calories is found in the icing.

3.       Only eat half of the cupcake (or sweet). My cupcake was pretty big. I ate it all. However, I followed rules 1 and 2. If you can’t follow rules 1 and 2, make sure to follow rule 3.

4.       Do not eat the cupcake late in the day (after 6pm). Don’t eat sweets too late. Eat it earlier in the day when your metabolism is revved up.

5.       Eat the whole cupcake, but just make sure to exercise it off. Though I ate these cupcakes, I did some exercising everyday too. If you are going to eat a high caloric sweet, the least that you can do is also treat your body by burning it off as soon as possible. I would suggest a one to one and a half hour workout where you burn at least 700-800 calories. That is the price you have to pay to eat it.

Now some of you might ask, why not just take it out of your diet if it is not good for you? Why not just practice abstinence from the cupcake? Why? In reality, sugar and calories are not necessarily bad for the body. Excess of them is bad. In addition, it is not realistic for a lot of us to totally take certain sweets out of our diets. For me, I KNOW it is not realistic. Several studies show that when people take things out of their diets, they tend to splurge on other things in excess to account for what they loss. The other thing they may do is abuse the sweet (eat excess amount of it) once they decide to eat it again. So instead of telling you never to eat cupcakes or certain sweets, I’d rather give you some guidelines that help you eat it in moderation as part of a healthy diet.

Whelp, that is all I have for today. Until next time….

-Jenelle Robinson