What's the Count, Ump?

When you go to the supermarket with your "magic" dollars in hand (let's say fifteen bucks to correlate with fifteen hundred calories), do you race up and down the aisles like a wild banshee, grabbing up beef tenderloins, throwing in King Crab legs, tossing in Walker's Shortbread by the caseload? Do you then head to the cashier, view the shocking total, shrug and fork over your fifteen big ones, thinking she'll make it "all okay?" I can assure you, she's not going to smile, wave her fairy dusted scanner and pretend you only spent fifteen dollars.
If you're anything like me, when you go grocery shopping, you make a list. You "plan" out what you need for dinner that night, for the kids lunches, for your son's birthday cupcakes. Then, you allot the money in the budget for those groceries and try to get the biggest bang for your buck. If you have fifty dollars earmarked for a shopping trip in which you need food for five dinners, ten brown bag lunches, a week end of country style breakfasts, you sure as heck aren't going to grab Parma prosciutto and a thimble sized container of homemade mozzarella at the deli counter. You make choices. Juggle here, skimp a bit, cut back there, save over there to allow for that (unless you're Steve Ballmer, and then who really cares).
Daily calorie counting is like grocery shopping on a budget, you budget your calories. You don't rise and shine in the morning and bellow, "Ah, I have 1500 calories! I think I'll eat nine servings of pancetta, eight "down on the farm" sausage patties, two boozelberry scones, and an inch slice of maple cured ham." You don't blow it all at the meat counter. You look at your day, each day, and you plan. If there's a bridal luncheon mid afternoon, you cut back at breakfast. If there's only enough time to grab a banana in the morning, pack some heat for later (a Yoplait or an instant oatmeal packet). If you really have to have that extra helping of Gnocchi Bolognese (and who wouldn't), and you're willing to sacrifice the Cannoli for it, then you go girl!
Fifteen hundred calories, that's what you get. You can choose to spend it wisely, or blow it all in one pop on a pint of Haagen Dazs Toasted Coconut Sesame Brittle Ice Cream, but like the cashier, the scale isn't going to make it "all okay" on the weeks you go over your calorie limit. The choice is yours. What's it gonna be?
I'd rather give myself a root canal if I had to follow a prefab diet plan. The good news again, is, I don't. There are a couple of foods in my pyramid I can't live without; Lofthouse cookies ( frosted discs of moist cake with a buttery cookie rolled into one), double dipped malted milk balls (these ain't your mama's Whoppers) and 24% or higher butter-fatted ice cream. If I deprived myself of this treasured trilogy for a quarter of a year, I'd go bonkers and chew the baseboard. Believe me, when I "eat around" (I'm certain you know what I mean by that) or deny myself what I truly crave, it ain't pretty.

Once, I attempted to "eat around" the cookie. A Tollhouse commercial got under my skin and I foolishly thought I could dupe my craving with a "good" food. Yep, that would knock it right out of my crawl. My "eating around" insanity, had cost me, after the crumbs had settled, a staggering : 2- 100 Calorie Packs Chips-A-Hoy Thin Crisps (if the first pack didn't do it for me, why would I have thought a second pack would?), 1-Dannon Blueberry Yogurt (full strength, not Light), 1-Gala apple, 21 Cheese Nips, 4 celery stalks smeared with Skippy peanut butter and, THEN, the eating circle began right smack back at the Tollhouse cookie. I savagely tore open the refreigerated roll (think Wildebeest) and hacked off, in pure Lizzie Borden fashion, two shmooshed rounds of gooey dough which instantly evaporated on my tongue while I "loaded" the eighteen survivors on a cookie sheet, which were actually baked and then eaten.

Total cost of National Geographic binge: 14, 097 calories.

Memories: senseless

If you have a hankering for a "just out of the oven" chocolate chip cookie, I implore you to eat it, count it, and be done with it.

Long story short: The "Plan" is eat until you reach 1500 calories (or whatever you've determined your magical number to be) and then move your butt. On your mark, get set, weigh.