Inventive Dieting Can Be More Sweet Than Sour

Growing up in an American middle-class family in the 80’s and 90’s, I ate a lot of McDonald’s. My drug of choice was always the Chicken McNuggets. I tried other sauces, but what really made my heart sing was always the Sweet N’ Sour sauce. I was (am) so in love with this sauce, that I would literally not eat the McNuggets if they forgot to put the sauce in the bag, thus forcing my grandparents (usually) to trudge back to the McDonald’s and procure the sauce.

Now I’m an adult, with type 1 diabetes, who’s on a perpetual diet. (Sad panda, right?? Hey, it could always be worse. Never forget that.) There is literally no room for McDonald’s in my life. I can make a better salad at home than any fast food joint can make, so squash that angle. Nothing else there is “healthy,” and I mean nothing, no matter what they tell you. (Don’t get me started on their oatmeal with approximately 9,000 grams of sugar in it. I said approximately.)

Guess what though? Chicken McNuggets are still delicious. Have you ever thought of a snack from your childhood, and then eaten it as an adult, and then had your romanticized notions of how good it was SHATTERED because, for example, Twinkies are a dry, hot mess? Let me be first to tell you, this doesn’t apply to the McNugget monster. Still good, but oh so bad.

So here I am. Craving, pining, crying…trying not to crack. BUT WAIT. Something happened one night. I had an extra tub of Sweet N Sour in the fridge from a previous day when I actually did crack, and hit the drive thru (happens to the best of us, and I’m not even the best of us). Boneless, skinless chicken breast (BSCB) is pretty much the foundation of all diets that aren’t against eating meat, and mine is no exception.

I took my BSCB and started dipping little forkfuls into the Sweet N Sour tub o’heaven. YES. THIS WORKS. As my face transformed into the hilarious visage of an enraptured carnivore, a new road to happiness opened. I still like the McNuggets and I’m sure that I always will, but since the discovery of how much of my love was sauce-based, I haven’t been through drive thru for them even a single time, IN ALMOST A YEAR.

McDonald’s will sell you sauces a la carte (at least in my town) for 15 cents each. I sheepishly asked my person if he would do me a huge favor, because I was horrified at the thought of going to the restaurant and making such a weird request. He was happy to oblige (a bit of an attention-seeker, that one), and proudly came home with a bag full of 30 Sweet N Sour sauces for my slathering pleasure. According to his report, the employees were quite amused, and had to run to the back to look up the code. I’m so glad he went for me. You have no idea.

The point is…sometimes the things you feel unfulfilled without, are things you don’t have to go without. If a small tub of sugar with almost no nutritional value helps you eat lean protein dinner after dinner – eat it. If a piece of swiss cheese helps you eat 99% lean ground turkey burgers instead of 85% lean ground beef burgers – eat it. And that All Bran you’re trying to slog through each morning instead of Captain Krunch…it tastes a lot better with a teaspoon of real sugar on it, and the extra 16 calories aren’t going to slow your weight loss down one bit.

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