October might start tomorrow on most calendars, but for me it started today when someone left a bucket of Halloween candy in my office suite. Already? Really? The month of struggling to resist the proliferation of bite-sized Snickers is already upon us?
That’s just wrong.
If you don’t believe me, try calculating the price of a handful of M&Ms in steps walked on a treadmill. Assuming you walk at the pace of 2000 steps every 20 minutes, one fun size pack of M&Ms equals 18 minutes on the treadmill. I tortured myself with that little bit of trivia every time I walked by that bucket today.
Once, years ago when I was on an altogether different diet, I told a friend that I sometimes ate a bite-sized candy bar as a way of avoiding eating a full-sized candy bar. She said, “Oh, yeah? Well, I sometimes eat a full-sized candy bar as a way of avoiding eating a full-sized cake.”
I guess she had me there. She should have just gone for the cake, though.
Cake is one of the rewards offered up in Heaven for good behavior. Candy is the Devil’s own work. Candy sneaks up on you. It feigns innocence as it tempts you down the happy little Reese’s Pieces’ trail toward double-digit weight gain. You think you can handle a single bite of chocolate, but you can’t. You think it’s okay to reach in and grab just one miniature Kit Kat as you pass the bowl, but how easily you forget this isn’t your first time around the room.
That’s how it happens that you are convinced you’ve been unwavering in your diet convictions only to gain 1.5 pounds in a week you expected to lose 2.
Candy is evil. Candy will kill you. Candy makes your teeth rot and your feet swell up. It leaves you with that dull guilt of knowing you’ve disappointed your mother.
But have you tried the Reese’s Nutrageous Bar? As long as you’re already a back-slider on account of that Tootsie Roll, you might as well have a nibble. The Devil never tasted so good.
