The Peeps Are Coming! The Peeps Are Coming!

Are you prepared for it? Are you ready to face the armies of jelly beans, marshmallow peeps, and chocolate bunnies that are about to be marching down your street and are in the aisles of every supermarket from coast to coast? Are you prepared to face the horror of the Ultimate Rational Cheat Day!?!?!

Easter is the worst day of the year for low carbers; it’s even worse than Halloween! You see, on Halloween, if you slip and have just one or two Bit-O-Honeys, you can blame it on the fact that there where no real low carb alternatives avoidable to you. I mean, how many people are handing out turkey legs and sliced ham to the trick-or-treaters? (Hmmm…That’s a thought for next year.)

But Easter? Ooh, Easter… if only that carpenter from Nazareth had known how much trouble he was going to be causing for low carbers!

Let me set the scene for you here; we have just as much candy around as we do on Halloween – all stuff made specifically for the day, like chocolate bunnies and marshmallow peeps, right? So tempting, oh, so tempting! There’s lots of opportunities to say things like “Well, the chocolate bunny isn’t wrapped. It could go ‘bad’ if I don’t eat it right away!” and “Such a shame that the kids only ate one marshmallow peep. I hate to see the rest of the package go to waste.”

So, we’ve got plenty of pressure there, and plenty of opportunity for rationalizing our cheats, just like Halloween. But what makes Easter worse is that, while you are surrounded by the sweets, you are also surrounded by so many low carb eats that you really have absolutely no excuse for cheating! Hard-boiled eggs, ham, lamb – even turkey and roast beef in some households! From the time I get up in the morning (surrounded by the wonderful aromas of eggs, bacon, ham, and sausage) to the moment I go to sleep (still enjoying the aftereffects of the delicious leg of lamb), there will always be a low carb alternative for me.

You would think that would make the chocolates and candies any easier to deal with? Not for someone whose mind is constantly out to sabotage his dieting efforts.

Now don’t get me wrong. I love my mind, and my mind loves me. We have a lot of mutual interests, enjoy hanging out with each other, and in generally to keep each other from harm.

You wouldn’t believe the number of times my mind has kept me from doing stupid, stupid things, like that time I almost got a VANILLA ICE RULEZ tattoo. But my mind stepped in and said Dude, what are you thinking? Vanilla Ice sucks! Go with the “Everybody Loves Raymond” tattoo, like we originally planned!! And I, in turn, have avoided shoving things so far up my nose that it may cause irreparable brain damage. (I usually stop pushing when I start seeing stars.) So I am sure that, even though my mind is constantly trying to sabotage my low carb lifestyle, he’s just trying to do what he feels will make me the happiest.

So on holidays such as Easter, when temptation is in the air, my mind and I are at constant war. Oh, the lengths my mind will go to in order to get me to cheat on that day! I have seen him go so far as to make me remove all the Easter eggs from the room, just so I could say Well, gee! Nothing in the room that’s low carb! I may as well just eat several handfuls of jelly beans!

My mind has also tried tricking me with rationale along the lines that, since they are technically representations of bunnies, chicks, and other Atkins-friendly meats, that it should be okay for me to eat them, right? And, of course, any foil-wrapped, egg-shaped chocolate should have no carbs. Oooooh, my mind is a tricky little devil!

You’d be surprised at the amount of brain tinkering that the medical community has done, all in the name of trying to help people be better friends with their minds! For instance, doctors with thick, German accents have spent years and years developing ways to train and condition the human mind.

Aversion therapy is one of the easiest ones to do from the comfort of your own home. I mean, why spend hundreds of dollars on expensive doctor visits and intense psychotherapy? So this year, I did a little bit of prep work to make sure that my mind won’t be sabotaging my efforts this year.

To follow my heroic and selfless lead, all you’ll need is a pile of jellybeans, a stainless steel fork, and a toaster (If you don’t have a toaster, an electrical socket will work just as well.) Simply set a few hours aside each day for your conditioning. Sit in front of your pile of jellybeans, with your fork in one hand and your toaster/electrical outlet within reaching distance. Every time you want a jellybean, go ahead and eat it! But as you chew the jellybean, you MUST shove your fork into the toaster or electrical outlet.

Supposedly this will cause your mind to associate jellybeans with painful electrical shocks. Unfortunately, all it seems to have done for me is to make me great entertainment for everyone at the party. Hey, give Brian some jelly beans and watch him twitch! It’s fun! (I’m always the life of the party.)

However, I haven’t quite come up with a way to get rid of the burnt-nose-hairs-and-sugar scent that seems to stay with you for weeks afterwards. After a while, though, you get really used to the smell and even begin to enjoy it. You won’t know how you lived without it before!