Saving the Best for Last

When I was growing up, my mom gave me confusing messages at meal times. We were not allowed to have dessert until we finished the meat and veggies on our plates. This rule taught me to save the best for last, and I applied it to everything – meals, homework, story books. I would play with my least-favorite doll all day in order to “earn” a nightly conversation with my favorite doll, Priscilla (who was forced to sit on my bed while I quizzed her math skills).

One day, my mother eyed the mashed potatoes on my dinner plate and said in a warning voice, “Aren’t you going to eat that?”

I said, “Yes, when I’m done with my peas. I’m saving the best for last.”

She snorted and said, “Be careful with that. You never know when someone’s going to come along and take your plate away from you before you get to the potatoes. So quit dawdling and clean that plate.”

Those were terrifying words to a kid like me, and they fostered my impulse to guard my plate, like a dog guarding a bone, while gobbling my food as quickly as possible. When I told a school friend about Mom’s warning, she said, “That’s nothing. You just have one brother. I have nine brothers and sisters. At my house, if you don’t move fast, you go hungry.”

My mom’s hurry-up-and-clean-that-plate eating message might not have been a very caring or sensitive one to give a child, but over time, I’ve been able to see a few grains of truth in it. For a time in my 20’s, I would order just chocolate mousse in a restaurant and enjoy it while my companions slurped their way through bowls of clam chowder. Even now, I feel that I’m spending my calories more wisely when I skip right to a 400-calorie dessert rather than eat 800 calories of meat and veg in order to earn the dessert that I’m determined to eat even if I’m already so full I could puke.

My other problem with Mom’s advice is that nowadays, it heightens my sense of deprivation. I’ve had more than enough of deprivation throughout several decades of unsuccessful dieting. Every diet guru had a list of Thou Shalt Not Eat foods. I often say that if you told me I could never eat ice cream again, I’d be on my way to Baskin Robbins faster than you can say “Jamocha Almond Fudge.” And what if I’m too full to eat the asparagus (a favorite veggy) after I eat my chicken and carrots? Even one bite of asparagus then might not stay down at all.

I’m not suggesting that you forsake humdrum proteins and complex carbs so that you can gorge on fat and sugar at every meal. I certainly can’t recommend eating your trigger food, be it potato chips or ice cream, for every meal and snack each day. Like it or not, the #1 reason for eating is to fuel your body, no matter how the fuel tastes. I am suggesting that you forsake the “save the best for last” rule as you trudge through your daily life, not just at meals but in everything you do. If you save all your food, activity, or other treats for the weekend, or your vacation, or for 11:30 tonight after you put the last load of laundry in the dryer, five weekdays will feel like 15, and by the time you get to that day off, you may be too tired to enjoy or even remember what your reward was going to be. Your sense of deprivation by then could be a bottomless pit that will never, ever, get filled up with food.