Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

You are looking at some of the most delicious cupcakes in Salt Lake City. They were provided by The Sweet Tooth Fairy at a geek event I went to a couple of weeks ago.

They were beautiful and lovely, but I had absolutely NO desire to eat them.

Surprising, really, considering my eating patterns, but they didn’t appeal to me at all.

That was the day that I realized that I don’t actually like cupcakes. It has taken me forty years to finally come to that conclusion. Sure, I like the flavor. I like the frosting. I like the cake.

It’s the cup that I don’t like.

Cupcakes are top heavy and awkward. I have to get frosting on my fingers while I try to take off the cupcake liner or I have to risk a bite of paper if I don’t remove it. The frosting is usually piled too high at the top to eat appropriately with the rest of the cake, so I end up with some bites with too much frosting and others without any. They are simply impossible to eat neatly.

When I attended that geek event in Salt Lake City, the delightful catering included platters and platters of gorgeous cupcakes. I looked at the table of food, and all I could do was stress out about how to eat one of those cupcakes. I was in a room full of people that I barely knew peppered with people who I knew really well who were desperate to introduce me to all of their friends and I was stressed out about a CUPCAKE!

In desperation, I decided not to eat.

Suddenly, the weight of all that beautiful catered food was lifted from my shoulders. All those people I was introduced to asked me if I had tried a cupcake and I said, “I’m not eating cupcakes today.” They accepted my words and most replied, “I shouldn’t be either.”

I watched them struggle with the cupcake liners and the frosting and the top heavy creaminess of it all and I breathed a sigh of relief instead of feeling left out.

This is AMAZING for me. It’s like one of those breakthroughs or A-Ha moments everybody talks about. Food stresses me out and sometimes it’s just easier to NOT EAT IT! If you had asked me that morning how to deal with the mess of eating a cupcake, I would have written you a bullet list on how to eat a cupcake without splurging too much or making your hands too messy. I wouldn’t have even considered not eating it. It just wasn’t an option

So, the answer to the question of how to eat a cupcake is: DON’T.

The simplicity of it all could just knock me over with a feather.

Photo via: Crystalyn Life Images