Every morning she bought her pain au chocolat

“After two months working at Fauchon in the pastries section, I had put on five kilos. Indeed one pain au chocolat per day, it’s fatal, no one can get through without putting on weight.”

This secret has been told to me recently by a charming young lady who is a cupcake teacher, actually I’ll tell you more about her demoniac know-how soon.

I didn’t answer anything, I’m not Zermati’s press attaché, neither a nutrition guru who would try to spread the good word everywhere. But within, I smiled.

Every morning, indeed, for almost one year, I have enjoyed my pain au chocolat or my butter croissant, bought in the best bakery in the world, it has received several gold medals for its pastries. I eat them with an unspoiled pleasure, a twenty years moratorium on puff pastry, it leaves marks.

Every morning, thus, I defy the laws of healthy eating, the ones that have been instilled in children for generations.

Every morning, I notice on my scale that you can very well have a pain au chocolat without gaining a gram. Better, you can have this treat and slim down. A lot. Because doctor Zermati warned me a few months ago against the risks, for my personal balance, of featuring my weight loss, I won’t give exact figures. But what I can say is that this method suits me better than all tested until now.

I don’t know what it will be like in one year, I don’t know what life has in store for me, the only certainty to tell the truth is that I don’t demonize a piece of Milka at the end of a meal anymore, that I sometimes crack on onion and sour cream Pringles, that I buy myself, on Wednesday, a slice of custard tart. And that all this doesn’t make me feel guilty. I also know that I eat less, being full much quicker, that when I’m feeling down, when nothing else than a treat is tempting me, I sit down and give in to the urge, focusing on the comfort it brings me.

I also know that on other days, when kids are not there, I turn on the TV and decide to eat while watching it, just like before, I find myself swallowing without tasting, without counting, filling myself like a goose I’d want to force feed. I then have this awful anxiety that ‘it’ starts all over again, that old habits come back insidiously, that all the way I’ve gone ends up on a dead end.

Then I remember doctor Z’s words, on weight loss not being an end in itself, on the fact that my life won’t change completely if I were to put on weight again. I remember that it’s this terror that could ruin me, this disgust of myself.

Then the next day, I wait for hunger. When it comes, I hear what has become my principle: ”what you eat with hunger doesn’t make you put on weight”. And I ask for a croissant at the bakery.

That’s where I am today, not totally detached, rather chilled but not ready to give up on this wellbeing, which I enjoy every day, because here is my only disagreement with doctor Z, at least for now: being slimmer does make me feel lighter. I know he wouldn’t be delighted if I were to tell him face to face, I know why too. But, I wonder if doctor Z already had his thighs rubbing each other so bad under a skirt they bled. I’m almost sure he hasn’t. It’s probably why he assures so strongly that putting on weight again wouldn’t be so bad.

To be continued, all in all…