What I Learned from a Bag of Pretzels

As you might have guessed from the picture, this is a post about peanut butter pretzels. Yes, I’m digging deep to keep this blog updated and offer you some sane, non-diet, intuitive eating insight at least on a weekly basis. Which leads me to write today’s post about, yes, peanut butter pretzels.

I used to salivate just looking at these puffed pretzels sprinkled with salt and filled with one of my favorite foods – peanut butter. I don’t buy the pretzels all that often because I’m not a big salty-snack snacker. I tend to gravitate towards sweet things – fruit, biscotti, or a buttery Madeleine cookie. But, my tastes change on occasion and sometimes I want salty.

That was certainly the case during the peanut butter scare a number of months ago, when all I seemed to want was salty peanut butter filled pretzels from Trader Joe’s. Not being able to eat them (because of the PB scare) made them even more enticing to me, so once I felt they were safe I bought a bag. Not long after I dipped my hand into the bag of what some would call a “very dangerous” snack (more on that later), I got very sick of the pretzels and haven’t been able to enjoy them since.

How did I tire of such a delightful snack so quickly? Here’s how it happened. It was Sunday afternoon, and a few hours after a delicious breakfast with Jeremy, I left home to meet my mom and sister for a bit of shopping. Given that I’d had a late breakfast, I wasn’t hungry for lunch, but I knew if I didn’t eat anything until dinner I’d be famished and cranky, possibly with a headache. So I packed a large Ziploc bag full of the pretzels, and put it in my purse along with a string cheese in case I got hungry on the road. Which I did.

As you can imagine, all I had to eat was my string cheese and PB pretzels. I enjoyed probably about the first 20 or so pretzels, but mid-way through the bag, I noticed that I was forcing myself to eat them, simply to alleviate growing hunger pangs.

I discovered on that afternoon that, delicious as they are, pretzels of any kind do not a meal make.

Fast forward about a month or so. I was at work late one night last week, fully immersed in a research project. I was growing very hungry for dinner, but I didn’t want to leave the office because I was not sure if I’d be able to re-enter the zone of productivity I was in at that moment, hunger pangs and all. The only snack I had with me was, you guessed it – that same bag of peanut butter pretzels I’d longed for during the PB scare…..yes, that one bag of pretzels had been sitting on my desk at work for weeks, untouched after opening it to get my through my afternoon shopping excursion with Mom and Big Sis.

Once again, I forced myself to eat the pretzels simply to ward off a headache and growing hunger pangs. I guess they sort of did the trick, but I didn’t enjoy one of them, and they kind of ruined my late dinner once I finally got home. As I sat at my computer, plowing through research, I begrudgingly ate one pretzel at a time, not enjoying the experience one bit.

When I got home from work that night – the remaining PB pretzels in hand – Jeremy looked at them and his eyes grew large, filled with that warm-fuzzy look you get when thinking about your mom’s jelly toast that no one made quite as well as she did (or whatever food it is that “does” it for you).

Just days later, when my parents were at our place to help us move furniture, we were literally walking out the door to dinner, and my mom spotted the pretzels. “Can I have just a few?” she asked with the look of a child caught awake way past her bedtime. “Of course!” I said, “Help yourself.” She and Jeremy then commiserated about how you can’t ever eat just one of those pretzels. “They’re addictive, and very dangerous,” Jeremy said. “I can’t buy them or I’ll eat them all in one sitting,” said my mom. “I know! I asked Maggie to keep them out of the house or I’d eat the entire bag.”

Well, I’ve got news for my hubbie, my mom….and you. The pretzels lose their allure (or “danger”) when you give yourself unconditional permission to eat them. Without judgement. Or shame. Or a slap on the wrist. But be careful – if you’re like me and make your previously mouth watering snack into a makeshift meal on a shopping spree, you may never want to eat it again.