No Control with Complimentary Desserts?

March 9th, 2010

Posted in Real Problems...Real Solutions, Weight Control | No Comments »

You just had a delicious full meal and are absolutely stuffed. The dessert menu arrives, but you decline as you couldn’t eat another bite. Suddenly a tray of desserts appear and is placed on your table. What is this? It is the dreaded – but desired – complimentary dessert! After all, calories don’t count if they’re free … right? (pic is of city man L.C. after indulging in multiple complimentary desserts. Understandably, he didn’t want to show his face to the camera)

I’m sure most of you have had this happen to you on occasion. Perhaps you knew the owner of the restaurant or there was some sort of problem in your dining experience – hence the complimentary dessert. This actually happened to my friends and I at a great restaurant called Washo in Park City, Utah. Unfortunately the restaurant had run out of several of the entrees that we selected. Despite this, our meal turned out to be great. We declined dessert, stating we were all too full. Then the tray appeared with 3 decadent COMPLIMENTARY desserts – squash cheesecake with cream cheese ice cream, coconut creme brulee and an apple tart with homemade ice cream. Mmmmmm…

So what do you think happened? Suddenly our forks attacked the 3 desserts like we hadn’t been fed in a week. Moments later, the plates were empty … So much for having been “too stuffed” for dessert! (pic is of the 3 delicious desserts pre-attack)

Tips to resist a complimentary dessert
Confession – I really don’t have any good advice, as I don’t practice what I preach on this one. But if I had to give a few tips, here they are:

1. First of all, if this rarely happens to you, dig in and enjoy it! Ideally, you would just have a bite or two to taste it.

2. Eat slow. Your dining companions will likely scoff it down in a few minutes (especially after a few drinks!) They will be so caught up in their feeding frenzy that they won’t even notice you eating minimally.

3. Put down your fork/spoon in between bites and drink water. Again, this will slow down your rate of eating.

4. Place the dessert as far away from you as possible. This will make it less likely that you’ll eat it. Leaning across the table to grab forkfuls of food looks greedy.

5. Secretly entertain yourself watching the sharks feed.

6. Keep in mind that all calories count, including the free ones. Each large bite of a rich dessert can contain 80 calories or more. (pic is of totally empty dessert plates. That mound you see on the green plate is an empty coconut shell. We weren’t that greedy…)

So my question is – why do we find room in our stomachs to eat a complimentary dessert when we are too full to order from the menu? Because it is free? Because it is in front of us? Just food for thought!

My special thanks to L.C for letting my friend and I stay with him in his condo in Park city and for being a good sport while I took numerous pics of him eating. He probably couldn’t wait until I left! Here is another post I did on L.C.’s olive oil habits last year.