The Chapter Treats

At the beginning of the year, I was set to move to Albany and begin the big, final push to finishing my dissertation. In what was perhaps one of the craziest decisions I've ever made, I decided that starting January 1, I would no longer be eating sweets*, until my thesis was finished**. (If you know me, you know I have an insatiable sweet tooth. I mean, really.) My thought process was that it would "motivate" me to hurry up and finish. Sort of like, "You know, I could really go for some ice cream. Well, I guess I better go write so I can be closer to getting that." Believe it or not, it was motivating like that at times. (But not all the time. But I still stuck with it anyway.)

But I decided to give myself a bit of a break. Rather than swearing off all sweets for eight months, I would allow myself a "treat" at the completion of every chapter. By this, I meant that it was one treat (for example, one bowl of ice cream, one piece of cake, etc.); and the chapter had to be in a form that was complete enough to send it to my adviser for comments. I also decided that the rules did not include drinking hot chocolate, since I was moving to Albany in January and it would probably be cold all the time. (I was right.)

Here is a collection of the treats I ate. And the chapter they represented. (The fact that I ended up throwing out the original Chapter 4 and adding a new Chapter 2 sort of messed things up a bit.)

Chapter 1

An amazing chocolate cake with pink frosting that Sarah made on our visit to Syracuse, NY. (I'd only been off sweets for like 3 weeks at this point, but was apparently so excited to eat it, that I couldn't even put my fork down for the picture.)

Chapter 2

Admittedly, I saved this one up for awhile. (About six weeks or something.) But I really wanted to take Nathan to Amy's Ice Creams after driving back to Austin with me. So I saved my treat and indulged there. Mexican vanilla with nutter butters. YUM!

Chapter 3 (old Chapter 2)

This was on my visit to Austin over Siena's winter break in February. Shared a fried ice cream from the Hula Hutt with Joseph.

Chapter 4

Probably the most exciting chapter to finish, as the data it required was the hardest to get through. It was a long time between finishing this chapter and finishing the previous chapter. I had saved those mint oreos from department cookie time for about a week, then bought a pint of Blue Bell cookies and cream ice cream. (And it HAD to be that flavor....I went to two drugstores near campus to ensure I found the right kind.)

Chapter 5

I finished Chapters 4, 5, and 7 all happened within like a week of each other, so I celebrated this one by just eating a bunch of cookies from department cookie time.

Chapter 6 (old Chapter 7)

I also finished this chapter during that February visit to Austin. Michelle and I had just finished biking around Town Lake. I got Amy's Ice Creams, Mexican vanilla with oreos.

Chapter 7

For the last chapter treat, I went to Swirll (frozen yogurt bar on Guadalupe) with my fellow finishing grad, Amy. We walked there and back, and I ate my whole thing (cookies and cream frozen yogurt with crushed oreos on top...and a few other things on top) before I got back to take the picture. Hence, the empty container.



Through this process, I learned that the sweet thing I always wanted most was ice cream. (As you can tell, it was often my treat of choice.) This really did surprise me, I thought for sure cookies were my biggest weakness.

Am I glad that I decided to give up sweets during this process? Eh, the jury is still out, but leaning towards a "not really" vote. Though it probably did save me from a lot of calories from stress-induced emotional eating. Which is probably a good thing.


* Sweets were defined as dessert-y foods and other sugary treats, including all forms of cake, ice cream, candy, brownies, cheesecake, cookies, pies, chocolate, etc. This did not include natural sugars (i.e., fruit). It also did not include cool whip nor sugary cereals. The rules I set up were pretty vague in the beginning and continued to be vague when people asked about this or that food. So sometimes people didn't like my rules, and I often couldn't justify them either. But it doesn't really matter in the end.

** In the end, I defined "finishing my thesis" as the moment when I actually turned every single completed form and the revised dissertation in to the graduate school. But I did indulge in treats at my party after my defense.