cookies

I love milk and cookies. I also love tea and cookies. Basically, I just love cookies. But they have to be the right kind of cookies. If chocolate chip, for example, they should be moist and chewy and preferably warm.

Today when I walked into the office, there were Girl Scouts in the lobby selling cookies. Now, I became a Scout at age 10 exclusively to have privileged access to these cookies. Other aspects of Scouting, like organized friendship, freaked me out a little. But the cookies made everything worthwhile. I even managed to convince my parents one year that we needed to buy 9 or 10 boxes of cookies to freeze so that we would have a store to last us the year.

So you can imagine my dilemma when I weigh my commitment to health against my love of cookies. What's a girl to do?

The answer, I think, is simple, and it's one you've heard before: Moderation. Balance. For me, that meant buying one box of Thin Mints, which thus far I've refrained from opening. Perhaps unusually, I like merely being able to see the box on my desk while I work. It's as though my mind registers sweet indulgence and joy merely by seeing the box, so it's not even necessary (yet) to rip it open.

This  method of moderation and delayed gratification has served me well over time; it also accords with the "French" method (as popularized by Americans) of eating slowly, consuming small portions, and cherishing one's food. But if you're someone who has trouble stopping after two or three cookies, perhaps your best bet is not to buy the box at all and then hope to snag a cookie or two from a co-worker who couldn't resist opening his own box immediately.

Delayed gratification is a great tool for maximizing happiness in general. For example, if you take a vacation after a six months or a year of thinking about it and looking forward to it, you're likely to enjoy it more than if you'd only planned it four weeks prior to departure.

Bear in mind that, generally speaking, a treat like cookies is more likely to detract from than to contribute to overall happiness because the pleasure it provides is fleeting, while the injury to your health, if you frequently indulge cravings, is long-lasting. But do what works for you, sustaining peak happiness without undermining your health.

My ideal scenario? running 10 to 15 miles a day and eating twenty-five cookies.