Losing a finger or two could be considered as a character building experience.

I recently upgraded the status of my “body fat terror alert” from yellow to red. It’s been determined that my ass is a weapon of mass destruction and I’ve enlisted the help of Weight Watchers to help me fight the good fight.

Losing weight is always a struggle, but I like the “Points” system and so far things are going well. The key is to have a lot of weight loss weapons in your arsenal – and I’m not talking about workout equipment or little scales to measure out all your portions – I’m talking about 2 cupboards worth of Fudge Grasshopper and Fudge Stripe 100 calorie packs.

Because without these things I could seriously be caught licking the Oreo cookie crumbs off the faces of my children, or worse: “Here sweetie, eat this Little Debbie Fudge Round and don’t worry if you get all messy, Momma will clean you up . . Oops, we’re out of wet wipes, let me just nibble that chunk of cookie off your sleeve there . . .”

I take these treats seriously here people. First of all they’re pricey and second of all they’re the only things that can keep me on track on certain days and I’ll be damned if I’m going to give even one of these little cookies up. But I have 2 children and as anyone with children knows – what’s yours is theirs. Far too many times I've had little fingers reaching into those sparsely populated bags. Too often have they reached for their own entire pack! I cannot allow this to go on. So far I’ve found the following strategies to be beneficial:

Distraction: Throw in a Dora or Diego DVD and as their little eyes alight upon the glory of Nick Jr. entertainment and their little bodies (and probably minds) cease to function, I sneak into the kitchen to enjoy my 100 calorie pack in peace.

Bargaining: “No honey, you can’t have any of Momma’s cookies . . . Oh don’t cry! You know how you’re always wanting to play driver in the van? Well here are the keys – go on out and play in the van for a while. Just remember to leave it in Park because neither one of you can reach the pedals.

Other times I try lying but Aaron is getting too old for that to work. For some reason he doesn’t believe that those cookies taste like broccoli, and he’s smart enough to recognize the boxes in the cupboard when I try to tell him that we’re all out.

Now maybe some of you are thinking that I should be sharing these low calorie, low fat snacks with my children in order to teach them how to be healthier and I’d have to say that I agree with that in theory. However, they really have fairly little nutritional value and most of the time my kids are content with some fruit. Thankfully they haven't yet learned to equate happiness with sugar and chocolate. Not to mention the fact that things are going to get really, really messy if I come home to find that I’m completely out of those 100 calorie miraculous elf created treasures. So even though I love my kids so much that I'd throw myself in front of a bus for them, they'd better leave my cookies alone if the want to go through life with all 10 digits intact.