Remember the biblical passage where Eve is tempted by an apple? Nowadays, you need to dress it up if you want to tempt me with it. Add a chocolate and sprinkles shell or some carmel and I might consider it an indulgence.
Now, I'm not saying that I need something fabulous to consider going on a "bad for me binge." Sometimes it can be a freezer burnt, half-melted ice cream sandwich from last july. I once considered eating year old valentine's candy. I'm not discerning.
Today someone brought in a box of fruit and cookies. Like a huge massive box of each, leftovers from a lecture series. The girls that work up front in my office had already samples the cookies. They were very colorful cookies from a whole variety of fields: ones with chocolate, ones with fruit, ones made in layers with pudding stuff. And all of them were very eye-appealing. However, the girls were spitting them out. Apparently, they weren't nearly fresh enough anymore and they tasted awlful.
The box of fruit was nearly the same. Warm and mushy, the kind you might find at the bottom of the fruit bowl the day after a family picnic. I found it to be pretty gross and dismissed it.
However, I had to answer the phone in the kitchen and I had to stare at the box of cookies for a good 10 minutes. My whole body wanted those cookies. Not just one of them, all of them. And I'm not even hungry!!!
So, here's my question: I know the fruit is gross so I dismiss it without thought. But when the cookies were gross, my body STILL wanted them. Why can't I shut off my brain in the same way when it comes to a "bad for me binge" as I can for, "that's so gross I wouldn't give it to my dog?"
I feel like a freak!
GJ