Cravings defeat otherwise healthy woman

I don't have to be pregnant to have cravings; I have had non-pregnancy cravings for as long as I can remember. I vaguely remember a night during my adolesence when my dad even went out for fresh peaches just to shut me up. I am convinced that, like most things, cravings must be hormonally-driven. A food craving will just eat away at me until I finally consume the craved delicacy. I can try to wait it out or eat something else instead (something I already have in my pantry, something that doesn't require a late-night trip to Kroger or the dreaded-but-so-much-closer Food Lion), but I have years of experience telling me that is futile. "Go ahead and indulge in chocolate cake with chocolate icing before it becomes chocolate cake with chocolate icing AND Blue Bell Natural Vanilla Bean ice cream [the mother of all ice creams]." (Britt learned this lesson the hard way sometime around my 8th week of pregnancy.) Postponing the indulgence is just the beginning of a process of packing in even MORE calories than I would have over-consumed by indulging in the object of my craving to begin with. If it's chocolate chip cookies I crave, chocolate chips eaten straight from the Nestle bag (perhaps with a side of natural almonds to keep me from eating too many morsels) will not satisfy my desire for chocolate chip cookies! Food cravings become a NEED more than a delightful idea. There is a huge difference between "Mmmm...that sounds good," and "Oh, Britton, I have had been craving Italian cream cake all week."

I bake things from scratch as a general rule of preference. It's usually deemed "not worth the calories" to eat convenience delicacies. An exception was granted last weekend, when I discovered the Nestle Toll House refrigerated chocolate chip cookie squares after a several-week-long craving episode with no end in sight and no time to whip up a recipe for 5 dozen cookies (and no mathematical energy to half the recipe). This was quite a craving to not only convince me to accept a convenience variety of the craved item, but also to pay a premium for said item when I found myself in the refrigerated section without my Kroger Plus Shopper's Card. That is some powerful desire! Well, the American Culinary Institute was right to award these cookies the Best Taste Award 2004. They were just what the craving ordered that night.

Practicing conscientious restraint, I retained several of the cookie squares for the next time I crave chocolate chip cookies. But tonight my mind knew they were in there waiting to be cooked. They were in there calling out to me! I had to cook them! Is this how men feel when they just can't shake the desire for sex, no matter how much they think about baseball instead? Now, I have warm, chewy, delicious cookies to eat. Every bite is a party in my mouth! There's just nothing like satisfying a craving. Now if only I could tweak my hormones to want sex this badly and this often...