When chocolate cake counts as a victory

Long time, no write. It's because I've been puking my guts out, and later in the week been busy eating chocolate cake. Wait, that sounds bad. Nevertheless, it is true. I caught a miserable stomach bug last week and consequently spent a large amount of time becoming well acquainted with my toilet (TMI, haha). The next day I was curious about the effects of dehydration and getting rid of everything in my stomach that I have ever  put there, so I weighed in. It showed I had lost 4 lbs in two days. I am sad to report that that this loss did not last, and went away pretty much as soon as I started eating and drinking again. Further proof that starvation diets do not work, but it would have been nice to have a little good come out of all that misery. Oh well.

I'm pretty much back to normal now, other than the odd stomach rumble or two. Hence, the chocolate cake. I was with my mom the other day, and she was telling me about this chocolate cake she made from scratch years ago. I have made exactly one cake from scratch in my entire life, and it was a pound cake. My cakes come exclusively from a box otherwise. So I decided I wanted to try to make this cake, under my mom's tutelage of course since I had no clue what I was doing. Now I don't know if you all have ever made a cake from scratch, but it is pretty labor intensive. As in, it took hours to make this cake. I tell you, I don't  know how people did this all the time back before the days of Duncan Hines and Betty Crocker. Anyway, it was finally finished and I had a slice. One slice. And at the moment that I was shoving the chocolatey goodness in my mouth, I felt like I had really mastered the space in between all or nothing. Because there was a time not too long ago when I would have polished off the vast majority of that cake all by myself. I would have reasoned that I deserved it after all that work. And there was also a time when I would have either said I couldn't eat any of that cake at all or I would have eaten a tiny bit and felt extremely guilty about it afterwards, like I had committed an unspeakable crime. So eating a slice of cake, even though it may sound weird for a blog about weight loss, seemed like a victory to me. It wasn't a reward, it wasn't a sin, it wasn't anything but a truly delicious slice of cake (if I do say so myself) that I was proud of making. The only regret I have about it is that there was not a way to just bake a few slices of cake instead of an entire cake, because now I am left with quite a bit of extra cake to disperse. I'm sure I can think of willing recipients other than myself for it though.

Okay, I seriously am not sure what is going on with my facial expression in this last picture. I wasn't even trying to make a weird face. It just happened. It frightens me that I make faces like that without even realizing it. Also, on another note, I would like to apologize if this post creates a longing for chocolate cake in anyone. That was not my intention, because as Cookie Monster likes to say about cookies on Sesame Street, "Cake is a sometimes food!"