Putting the Fork (or Spoon) Down

About a month and a half ago I traded in gelato for apricots on a warm summer evening, when all I wanted was a delicious frozen dessert. “How is that intuitive,” you ask? Read on.

Jeremy and I had just finished one of the most delicious Thai dinners we’d had all year, and though it was satisfying, we wanted to cap it off with an equally tasty dessert. We saved room for it, and eagerly made our way to our neighborhood’s newest dessert shop, which I’ll leave nameless just in case they are having early opening product snafus. (I don’t want to give them a bad name if their product improves)

When we walked into said nameless dessert shop on Ventura Boulevard, we strolled through the entire store just admiring the design, décor and concept. It was part old-fashioned ice-cream parlor and part candy store. I was in heaven – already picturing many evening trips to this place, hubby on one arm, Baby Miller on the other. The store serves gelato (one of my personal favorites), frozen yogurt, candy and an assortment of baked goods – cookies, cakes, cupcakes, you name it.

Wonderful idea. Bad execution.

Jeremy ordered a frozen yogurt, which he got to serve to himself (part of the fun), and I ordered gelato. We sat at a table outside to enjoy our desserts and one of our quickly evaporating nights out as a couple before our little Emily arrived. But then we tasted our treats. After about three or four bites, I put my spoon down and gave it to Jeremy.

“Does this taste funny to you?” I asked, wondering if it was my highly sensitive pregnancy taste buds playing a trick on me or if the gelato was simply not good.

“Yeah, it’s gross,” he said after taking a cautious bite. “And my yogurt is disgusting, too.” We each took a few more small bites, in the hopes of our desserts magically improving, but they didn’t. Being extremely pregnant, and having my heart set on a frozen dessert, I suggested we bail on the $8 worth of bad gelato/yogurt currently melting on the table between us, and go to Baskin Robbins.

Because you can’t turn down a pregnant woman’s request for ice cream, my hubby started driving us to our local shop. Just as we were about to pass the turnoff for home, I said, “You know what? I don’t think I want it anymore. That gelato kind of ruined my craving for ice cream.”

He felt the same way, so we headed home, where I found, to my delight, two delicious looking (and tasting) apricots sitting in our fruit bowl. Needless to say, that was my dessert and it was more satisfying than ice cream ever could have been at that moment, post gross-gelato.

Intuitive Eating Takeaways:

- Eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re full, and certainly stop when something doesn’t taste good. It’s all too easy to eat an entire meal (often past fullness) in the hopes that the next bite will be satisfying, when in actuality, it’s not.

- Give yourself permission to eat your favorite foods. Unconditionally. Because I knew I could go to Baskin Robbins anytime I desired, I was able to listen to my body and change course, trading in a chocolate-peanut butter cone for two apricots. (When my taste for ice cream returned a few days later, we did make our way to Baskin Robbins, and I ordered my cone)