I have to admit to a slight feeling of smugness when I say: I eat everything. I have never “watched” what I eat or otherwise been concerned with my health and weight, and I’m doing just fine, thank you. Maybe I’m lucky, but I also think moderation and cooking for myself does the trick. La la la–aren’t I great?

Oh, well, now I also have to admit: There was a little interlude of jeans-digging-painfully-into-my-burgeoning-gut this summer, but that seems to have disappeared. No thanks, though, to (OK, admitting more) about ten days of thinking maybe I should eat smaller portions and cut down on some of the desserts. And those were some incredibly depressing days–I did begin to understand how this fear of food has developed in so many people. It’s just the end of all pleasure as soon as you start looking at everything you put in your mouth in terms of where it might wind up bulging out on your body–midsection or butt? Or inner thighs, which are rubbing together in an unpleasant way?

Incidentally, the upshot of these ten days of vigilance and semi-abstinence is that I began to crave the strangest, junkiest things–whatever I could get from the office vending machine, frozen pizzas, Ho-Hos, you name it. For me, anyway, even thinking about “dieting” was very, very bad for me.

So, once I was through with that little thought experiment, I settled back into my usual habits, and now my pants fit again.

But perhaps what distracted me from my weight–and I guess I should be grateful for that–was another dietary issue altogether.

Without getting into specifics, let’s just say I take a little something daily to prevent the arrival of Roving Gastronomettes or Roving Gastronomitos. That little something also has the benefit of giving me dewy, smooth skin–the sort I should’ve been entitled to as soon as I stopped being a teenager, but for some reason just never got around to arriving on its own. Presto–a magic pill, and I am no longer looking at myself aghast in the mirror in the morning before I grab the concealer.

In recent years, however, even though my skin texture could be mistaken for a French woman’s in some light, it has taken to getting unattractively blotchy when I spend even four minutes in the sun. By the end of my Greece sojourn last summer, I looked a bit like I had been standing by during that terrible mishap at the self-tanner factory (the one that maybe also hit Lindsay Lohan?)–though fortunately I’d been wearing my safety goggles.

Like any disfigurement, I’m sure it looked worse to me than anyone else, but I decided I needed to adjust my daily treatments. So I started on a new formulation that held some promise of an even skin tone, though certainly no guarantee. One large perk, however (sensitive boys, block your ears): my period would dwindle away to next to nothing! Hooray! Oh, and the packaging was much cooler.

But then came the pendulum, swinging back the other way. Within a month, my skin texture was an utter fiasco–I felt like I was back in high school or worse, that year in Cairo when everything was just like being in high school again.

Then I remembered something a friend had mentioned, about how dairy products really made her skin break out.

I subsist on dairy products–they are my go-to protein source. This summer I ate either feta or yogurt or both every single day, and in my normal routine I eat milk for breakfast, maybe a grilled-cheese sandwich for lunch or a cheesy omelet, and then when I don’t know what else to put in the salad, I put in some Parmesan or little grated Cheddar bits. Cheese keeps forever in the fridge, and it’s available in amazing variety. Yogurt is good for the gut. Milk just hits the spot on certain occasions. Cream spruces up some dishes in a lovely way. And butter–I think I must be made of butter by now.

But I tried going without for a week, and, lo, my skin returned to normal. Then I ate a slice of pizza with a dollop of fresh ricotta, and woke up with a massive bump on my chin.

So. Vanity or gluttony? Do I give up a major part of my diet in exchange for the convenience of no period and the social confidence that comes with a flawless complexion?

I fretted for about a month, thinking maybe I was wrong, or my body would adjust. Making little mental negotiations like, well, if I give up butter, I guess that just means more opportunities for duck fat? And I _guess_ I prefer the intensity of fruit sorbets…

But that month was a pretty long time (frankly, I didn’t realize I was so vain in the first place), and it’s not like I really stayed on the wagon in the first place. I just could not face a life of placing food in ‘yes’ and ‘nooooooo!’ categories.

So just a few weeks ago, I switched back to the original anti-kid, anti-pimple, pro-blotch formulation.

You can read this two ways: I have zero will power and restraint. Or I’m fabulously deep–surface beauty doesn’t matter to me in the least, darlings.

Naturally, I agree with the latter interpretation. I’ll just buy a much bigger hat for next summer–and eat a lot of ice cream.