For quite a few years now, part of my fitness routine is to give myself some extra rest on the weekend.

Part of this rest—along with spending quite a bit of time reading on the couch– is to give myself a break from one of the dietary practices that I try to follow during the week, which is to steer clear of excessive amounts of sugar.  

I’ve always had a healthy appetite for sweet snacks. As a kid, for example, I stopped at the corner drugstore almost every day while on my paper route to buy an afternoon snack of five Reese’s peanut butter cups.

If I still ate like that I’d be obese, have diabetes, or both. So over the years I have developed what I believe to be a pretty good practice for keeping my sweet tooth in check.

During the week I keep a pretty close eye on my sugar intake. On the weekends, I give this discipline a bit of a rest and indulge a little.

The key words here are “a little.” As most anyone with a sweet tooth will tell you, it’s often a challenge to have “just one” cookie, piece of candy, or other sweet treat.

It will be a special challenge during the coming weekends in that my annual order of Girl Scout cookies just arrived. Next to M & M’s, Dove chocolate, and Red Vines licorice, it doesn’t get much better than thin mints and peanut butter patties for a sweet tooth like me.

This year is a special treat in that I have what is for me a new variety to sample—s’mores. Based on what I’ve heard about them, it’s a fitting name in that it will be a challenge not to eat s’more of them than I should at one sitting.

I am confident that I can meet the challenge, however, thanks in part to being called out several years ago by a friend who saw my weekday/weekend dietary practice in action over an extended period of time. She pointed out that I was likely negating any dietary gains I made by avoiding excessive sugar intake during the week by taking in excessive amounts of it on the weekend.

The key, I have learned, is portion control. Several cookies is fine. Several boxes, not so much.

So during the coming weekends I’ll be doing my best to eat the s’mores and peanut butter patties one cookie rather than one sleeve at a time. But I’ll definitely be eating them!

The way I see it, life is too short not to eat Girl Scout cookies and other sweet treats.