Sitting around reading romance novels and eating chocolates can be hazardous to your youth. I’ve recently owned up to the fact that sugar is bad for you. In fact, sugar makes you age faster and increases the lines on your face. After a few looks in the mirror, I realized I needed to take action.  I don’t like needles so Botox is out and I’m not about to become friendly with a plastic surgeon, so I needed to find a natural way to look younger. I went to my usual reliable source, the internet. I scoured the web and found the Perricone Diet – a diet that takes away the lines and wrinkles. It requires you eat no sugar and essentially consists of cantaloupes, berries, oatmeal, yogurt, salmon, tuna, chicken breast, almonds and large amounts of water.

The first two weeks weren’t bad.  No salt, no vinegar, no sugar… and I actually began to see results.  By the third week, I continued to see results but had slipped into a ‘deprived’ state.  You know the state I’m talking about.  It’s when that voice in your head begins as a soft murmur and as the minutes, hours and days go by it becomes a roar inside your head, “YOU DESERVE A BREAK TODAY, YOU’VE BEEN SO GOOD.”  When I couldn’t shut the voice off, and couldn’t bear to listen to it any longer, I realized I needed to do something or my head would explode, splat all across the kitchen counters.  It promised to be a messy affair.  Suddenly my cell phone rang and my beloved husband was on the other end asking if I needed anything before he came home.  Oh joy, someone who could rescue me in my hour of need.

“Honey, would you stop and pick up a package of ring dings.

He paused, “Are you sure you want that?  I thought you were on a special diet?”

“No,” I said, “I’m taking the evening off from my diet.”

He paused again, thinking he was helping me out knowing I had the goal of losing the wrinkles around my eyes and the sags under my cheek bones.

“No,” I screamed, “you don’t understand.  I really, really want a ring ding.  I’m a big girl; I know exactly what I want.”

Again, he refused, thinking he was actually doing me a favor.  My last comment, before I pressed the end button on the cell phone was, “Don’t even think about stepping foot in the front door without the ring dings.”

Okay, I was desperate; I hadn’t had sugar for over three weeks.  Yes, the wrinkles were  fading, but at that moment, I didn’t care if I looked like a 95 year-old woman who’d been baking in the sun  her entire life.  My sugar needs superseded the desire to look younger. And right then and there I had a realization – It’s my face, deal with it.

Do you ever go against what’s ‘good’ for you in favor of what feels good?