I’m finding Janice Taylor and my online blog conversation very, very revealing!  Janice and I have gone in just four little days from hunger for weight loss, brownies, to diets, carbohydrates, to grandmothers and mothers, to hungry, starving people that need help, to cake and its colors.  Janice Taylor’s latest blog is about Harriet, her mom (who she calls “the Queen of Cakes”) and expressing love through cakes, read it here.  Yes Janice, you and your mom are absolutely uniquely delightful.  With such sweet mother and daughter love going on, why do you need cake?

The marvels of free-association!  The wonders of mysteries!  The delights of cake and no-cake, of colors and fun, of mom and mom’s moms.  Where’s the apple pie?

OK.  Stop.  I’m all into making weight loss fun, but I need to get serious now:

IS WHAT YOU’RE HUNGRY FOR…

—-  HEALTH?

—- or PLEASURE?

Is cake going to give you lasting joy, or a temporary sugar high?  Does it have side effects, like short-term energy with a soon-to-follow sudden downward spiral; a long-term side-effect like obesity if you have a lot of it?  When I was losing the 160 pounds, I had to avoid cake and sugar-laden items entirely, by the grace of God.

I am hungry for health.  I want to have a long, healthy and happy life.  I want to feel the joy of NOT having cake very often, and the ability to have some if I want.  I am truly hungry for the peace and deeper satisfaction of abstaining from things that are unhealthy (like a lot of sugary stuff).

I think, and I read between her lines what Janice is alluding to.  If I understand her last post correctly, the cake is merely a social device for her to connect with her mom – even a kind of mother and daughter bonding.  Coloring and decorating the cake, and even enjoying a little of it together (which wasn’t mentioned, but I hope you do, and I bet you do!), is wonderful.

But if YOU, dear reader, want to lose weight, or maintain a weight loss, you may find it best to decorate your life with living colors, and not with much cake.  Not to mean it’s not permitted, everything’s permitted, but the key is to be able to enjoy moderation with it.  Moderation I maintain is humanly impossible, especially with those of us who are, or were, compulsive overeaters.  True moderation in someone who is addicted to cake and sugary stuff, comes only by the grace of God, or one’s Higher Power.

I love it that Janice recommends being creative and colorful.  I totally agree.  However, I couldn’t look at a picture of a piece of cake much less color it when I was 400 pounds – I’d have to have some real cake immediately, and lots of it, probably an entire cake – that’s how impossible it was for my former obese self.

Thanks be to God I can now have some cake and eat it too, but only once or twice a month, if that.  I’m actually not so interested in cakes these days, that’s the vast elegance of spiritual relief from addictive, compulsive overeating.  I can color it too, because God has taken away the compulsion.

PLEASE POST: are you hungry for HEALTH or PLEASURE?

If you’ve missed our online conversation thus far, start here with the first post, and then click through all the way, and come back daily.