A few times a year, for some celebratory reason or other, my grandmother makes a chocolate cake. And she happens to make the best chocolate cake in the world:
Paleo or not, there aren’t many reasons in the universe that I would not eat Grandma’s chocolate cake. However, there are many reasons TO EAT IT. Chief among these is that it is delicious. Next is that she’s 83 years old and bakes one of these bad boys every time the whole family gets together. She has to get up at 3am to do it. So, notwithstanding that I would be the family pariah if I said “I eat special” and turned it down, well, I could not conscionably turn it down anyway! Not grandma’s cake!
Anyway, my point is: if you need to cheat on paleo/primal, do it right. If you can’t avoid cheating, at least be prepared.
On this particular occasion – father’s day – I was unable to make it down to my parents’ place, so the offer was made to have The Cake transported to me afterwards by my lovely sister.
This was around 5pm. So I figured The Cake would arrive around 7 or 8. Thus, at around 6pm, I drank lots of water, headed to the gym, did 20 mins of heavy lifting and 20 mins of high intensity interval training, then drank lots more water. Then I had a sensible low- carb high protein dinner, and waited.
The Cake arrived around 8. There were two largish pieces, so my partner and I split one. Our recent primal living had done its work – the pieces seemed huge and oh so indulgent. And then we ate them.
So, everyone came out of the situation happy, even though I usually try to avoid such situations generally. Grandma was happy to make us happy, we were happy to eat The Cake, and my body was happy that I made that extra bit of effort to fend off the evil effects of The Cake before putting it in my body.
Anyone else have any stories of how they fended off the evil of obligatory non-paleo ingestion?
Let us hear ’em!
T
Cave Lesbian 
Yum. I don’t do paleo, but my diet definitely doesn’t allow chocolate cake! That being said, I have had a number of special occasions where it would have been crazy of me to turn down a delicious dessert. I generally find it easy to say no to non-dessert foods, because there are often alternatives available.
It’s amazing how your body reacts after having sweet foods following an absence. I had Ben and Jerry’s ice cream on the weekend (very bad of me, I know 😉 ) and it was soooooo over the top sweet. It tasted like I was literally eating a teaspoon of sugar.
Also – bad influences like Mary Poppins don’t help! “Just a spoonful of sugar…” I wonder if that musical got funding from the corn processing industry?