Sunday 24 September 2000

Pic of the day: "Sic transit gloria mundi" - so passeth the glory of the world. In this case, boxes of yoghurt and a bag of chocolate covered caramel.

Snacking

I was playing The Sims, when I caught one of my Sims grabbing a bag of snacks from the fridge, even though the dinner was still on the kitchen counter. I was enraged. "Why, you'll never ever be allowed to eat another snack in your life! I'm tempted to just kill you off..." I muttered. "Magnus?" said God softly. "Oops" said I.

***

I'm a habitual snacker. Perhaps even a compulsive one. I snack several times a day - in fact, I usually eat only one or at most two non-snack meals a day. I start my day by eating a yoghurt in front of my computer. It's a very healthy snack, but even so ... Arriving at my workplace, I usually down a couple more yoghurts. I may munch a few lozenges or, if I'm particularly hungry, cheezy maize snacks, though not too much because I still want my lunch. (Typically pizza or burger: I always leave work for lunch, which is my main meal.) When I return, I may bring with me some chocolate or candy, which I snack on during the rest of the workday. Towards then end of the workday, I will often make a quick trip to the cellar shop to buy a couple of yoghurt.

Once back home, I will replenish my energy with chocolate milk, yoghurt, pieces of chocolate, candy, soda, mineral water, and perhaps some tortilla chips or cookies. Some days I also eat a slice of bread or two, but not often on weekdays. Sometimes there's also some ice cream in the freezer, which I can snack on.

Since only a small part of my snack intake is fatty stuff (chips, cheeze doodles etc) and quite a bit is yoghurt, it's not all that damaging to my health. But it's not exactly the cheapest way to fill your stomach. When my Sims start snacking habitually, I put something in front of the fridge door; but that doesn't work with me.

***

I know some people can't stop once they get started on a snack. Give them one wafer and their hands move without any further control from the brain, stuffing their face until the bowl is empty. I find that fascinating, but I'm not quite like that myself. Now after I lost some weight in the antibiotics debacle, I find that I'm hard pressed to stop halfway in a yoghurt, the way I would often do before. But I can have a plate of chocolate over several evenings, breaking off small pieces now and again to snack on. A bag of tortilla chips may last for one or two weeks. That's quite a blessing, for I can only vaguely imagine what I would look like if I really started to stuff myself.

The truth is, however, that my extra weight was nearly all gained during the months when I ate dinner daily. (I got dinner for free when I worked on the debt collecting software.) Before that, I was slightly under normal weight. After, I was nearly 10% over. I haven't weighed myself lately, but after this summer I'm visibly slimmer. I wonder if this will last until I start eating dinner again, or if I'll rebuild it with snacking eventually. I find myself eating more than I did, but most of it is yoghurt and throat lozenges...

***

So anyway, this is the reason why I was so ticked off at my snacking Sim. For it is always that way, that the things we really hate to see in others is the things we refuse to see in ourselves.

"Forgive me God, for I have sinned" I said. "Yes" said God, "if you've learned your lesson, I'm satisfied." "To treat my Sims like I want to be treated by God." "Not just your Sims!" "Okay. But one thing ... I still get to snack, don't I?"