The Fat Diaries: Resisting the Buffet Temptation
Since it’s still vacation time I thought I’d cover another jolly-holiday obstacle to the waistline. Wherever people are traveling to – beaches, lakes, theme parks or cruise liners – there always seems to be one constant presence: the all-you-can-eat buffet. Any place I’ve gone this summer, billboards and flyers all tried to get me to plop down a cover charge with the promise of stuffing my face. I was tempted, I’ll be honest, but I had to think about why that was.
As a kid, I was always a fan of buffets, especially on vacations. The Sizzler Steakhouse buffet was my favorite dining destination, as was the Shoney’s breakfast bar. My brothers were both bottomless pits, and I followed suit because I felt we were competing somehow to see who could stack up the most empty plates. I also loved the freedom of not having a set menu. I didn’t have to eat anything I didn’t want (although I usually did want it). I could go back as many times as I wanted and there was no limit to quantity. I remember this one time where I loaded up a plate that consisted entirely of hush-puppies.
My mother would sigh and look embarrassed, but she didn’t say anything. She didn’t want to embarrass me in public – and that was another bonus. No one could lecture me about my choices in public. No one said, “at least put a vegetable on your plate or a piece of fruit, for God’s sake.” I heard “oh, Monica, really!” a lot, but nothing else. Besides, my brothers were always worse than me. One would be in tears because his food was touching, while the other was trying to make a sandwich out of a hamburger, fish fingers, and macaroni between two slices of pizza. I was the good kid.
I’ll give my mother the benefit of the doubt and assume that she intended to address my eating habits on the way home, or later that evening, but one thing or another drove it out of her head. I know she didn’t like it when I came back form the dessert table with eight cookies floating in pudding. How could she? I’m sure she had whispered a few warnings to me when we were out of earshot, but I usually nodded and ignored her. That kind of advice made me indignant. I was in an eating paradise! How could she be so cruel as to ask me to exercise self-control? I was on vacation!
That mentality comes back with a vengeance when you’re on vacation. There’s that desire to cast off all rules and inhibitions and responsibilities, yet there are so few acceptable venues of doing this! You can’t skip out on bills, or drive like a maniac, or leave the kids without a sitter. So many of our responsibilities are necessary and not tossed off lightly. Some use a vacation as an opportunity to drink margaritas every day, but most of us, put off by impending headaches, choose instead to overeat. That’s why buffets in resorts are doing gangbusters right now; eating until we bust is one of the few decadences left to adults.
The buffet is an intoxicating, liberating wonderland smelling of broccoli and french fries. It contains not only food, but the promise of food. There’s a comforting assurance that should we need more, there will always be more. That kind of security is hard to find these days. Once you’ve paid your cover charge there’s no rush to get you out, there’s no waitress trying to memorize the house specials and no waiting for your order. A buffet says, “Relax! Eat! Take your time! Talk to your friends and enjoy the evening, and if you need me, I’m only a few steps and a clean plate away.” Unfortunately, it also says, “I have seven kinds of cake, three of which you haven’t had in years!”
When I was at the beach a few weeks ago, I kept showing my husband flyers and coupons for all-you-can-eat seafood bars. I kept saying, “it’s not the beach unless we eat seafood!” (For more examples of my food-association nonsense, see last week’s article.) I also longed for that relaxed, stress-free buffet atmosphere. We called up a few places to ask about prices and such, but quickly became discouraged. Most of the seafood buffets had a cover charge upwards of $25-a-head.
Five years ago, this wouldn’t have been an arguing point (unless we were broke). Buffets used to be the one kind of restaurant where I could eat until I was full. I was a 3-plate-minimum woman and I ate until I got my money’s worth. These days, however, that’s not the case. With my new lifestyle of eating, my appetite has gotten a lot smaller over the years. Now at the few buffets we go to, which I try to avoid in the first place, I eat a sensible plate and then get dessert. It’s almost funny to me that when I go to a buffet now, I almost certainly do not get my money’s worth. It makes more sense to spend less money on less food.
With our budget in mind, and scanning the menus of every restaurant in town, we found a place that offered ½ lb of crab legs for $10 ($14 if you added a baked potato and grilled zucchini.) It was a great meal! We were both pleasantly full and we got our taste of the ocean without going over budget. We also avoided the need for a breakfast of Pepto Bismol with a Metamucil chaser.
When The Boy gets older and becomes one of those hyper-metabolic bottomless pits that all boys morph into (at least all boys in my family, anyway) a buffet might become a necessary evil again to save our wallet. Until then, I think I’ll shop for a good affordable place with just enough food to satisfy… and make good use of the bread basket.
