I'm taking a break. Like this guy.

And my little kiddo is sick, and last week was a total bust when it comes to tracking or even halfway paying attention to healthy eating or exercise. So I’m going to take a week or two off. I’ll still post, but I’m not going to worry about progress or tracking while I’m figuring some things out.

We went to the mall tonight, that bastion of healthy food, that very model of consumer moderation, and of course Beth wanted to visit the food court. Miles, our son, is taking a class on making models at a gaming store (need to get those geek kids started early), and Beth, his four-year-old sister, has very little to do during these two hours except romp in the play area (it’s like a giant playpen for kids, with benches along the side for the weary parents), and watch her mother hyperventilate from nostalgia (or plastic fumes, hard to tell which) in the Hello Kitty store.

We were doing okay until we passed the Cinnabon counter, and then I was puuulllllled in, by alien forces I can’t begin to understand. I could almost see the tracking beam find me, and then, Homer Simpson-like, almost lose me due to my overly large belly. But then it got me again, and then I was standing there, in front of the smiling Cinnabon man, thinking things like:

• My last Cinnabon was three weeks ago. One Cinnabon every three weeks counts as moderation, right?
• This guy has a lot of tattoos for someone working in retail. As a tattooed person myself, should I be happy about that?
• How much dairy is in one of these anyway?
• Just one won’t hurt.
• If I don’t write about it on my blog, it’s like it didn’t happen.

Approximately $4 later, I was going home with a large, doughy, milk-filled pastry that went against my Buddhist vow to not harm any sentient beings, in several interpretations of the phrase.

I’m a little over half-way through it, and I just stopped. I gave the rest to Jason and Greg, who devoured it. It felt really good to stop. I wasn’t inhaling it or anything, but I was having that strange experience where it feels simultaneously good and bad to be eating something. Do only people who struggle with their weight have this sensation?

It’s very hard to catch yourself in the moment that you’re doing something you really, deep down, don’t want to be doing, especially when it offers this kind of delicious food escapism. The Cinnabon helps me forget that my back is hurting, my hair smells like the pool, the regular problems with anxiety, the annoyance at my sports watch breaking, and the grief I felt last night watching Spirit of the Marathon while knowing how unlikely it is that I could ever complete an event like that.

Obviously, eating the Cinnabon contributes to anxiety, and probably back pain, and definitely to my inability to run a marathon (let’s all be glad that it doesn’t make your hair smell like a pool). So why do we do it? It isn’t mysterious. It’s the inability to put aside short term happiness for long term happiness. It’s the tendency that we all have to one degree or another, and it’s a pain in the ass for many of us. Malls are there to exploit it, as are Cinnabons. I was suckered in, and I went down with a smile.

I’m not going to beat myself up about this, in case you’re wondering. I promised moderation, and that’s what I’m doing, and it feels good so far, and beating myself up about a cinnamon roll would have zero positive effect except to make me feel guilty and encourage me to quit, which isn’t something I want. I’m turning over a new leaf.

I’ve sent two email messages in two days, asking what happened and to please refund my money. They aren’t responding. Finally this afternoon I called their support line, which only went to recordings. I left a message detailing what had happened. The support line claims that it will get back to me within 24 hours. We’ll see.

In the mean time, I suggest you DO NOT subscribe to the “Inner Circle“, unless you’re absolutely sure that you want to give them your money. Their cancellation policy on their website is this:

But to cancel, all you have to do is Just send an email to support@renegadehealth.com with the subject “Inner Circle Cancel” and please include the email address you used to sign up, your nickname here in the inner circle and your full name. This will allow us to easily process your cancellation. We’ll process it right away.

That’s exactly what I did on 9/18/2009, and they charged me anyway on 9/30 (I became a member on 8/31/2009, so my cancellation request was well within the deadline). I’m really disappointed with the site, and the way it’s run. It really feels like a racket instead of a sincere attempt at providing people with good information (I know, many of you are going, DUH, right?).