Have you ever held a chocolate egg in both hands and just taken a big bite?

17^th April 2014

You wouldn’t expect a flower to blossom without water and sunlight so why would you expect your body to thrive without nutritious food?

Yesterday was yet another valuable reminder on my journey back to my bmi goal weight, eating doesn’t make a life situation better and if you choose to, you can realise that beforehand and stop yourself from overeating!  I managed to anyway, and it’s amazing how clever your subconscious brain is if you stop to listen to its tricks, the things it says to catch you out and try and knock you off track to go back to your old habits.

So yesterday was an emotional day from a work point of view, my manager will no longer be my manager and that’s sad as she helped me a great deal when I decided to be a full time leader 9 years ago and I shall miss her, this of course means times are changing for me too as I will get me a new manager.  Well with change, loss and sadness come the opportunity to comfort eat and to think sod it!  My greedy gremlin even used this ploy as she spoke to me when I was sitting in my office,

“Eat that chocolate Rolo egg, you know you want too, you know the one, it was on your meeting table all last week, the one you were going to give to your bestie for her little un, but she didn’t come to yours last week so you couldn’t!  It’s behind you on the bookshelf so you can reach it easily.  You said you were going to have some chocolate over Easter anyway, so you may as well have it today whilst you’re down about Deb!  Makes sense really and what’s even better about that idea is you get to bite into a chocolate egg like you watched young Jen do and realised you’ve never done that – EVER in your entire life.  How great would that be, especially today cos you’re miserable and it’ll cheer you up.  Oh and don’t forget you love Rolo’s and you haven’t had any for years.  Did I mention you haven’t had an alcoholic drink for ten days, that’s surely means you can have chocolate because you have loads of weeklies to play with and you’re not going away at the weekend so you won’t need any to save!” 

My subconscious inner greedy gremlin is a bitch!  She’s a feeder too if you hadn’t noticed and she has a talent for justifying EVERTHING and I’m sure I’m not the only one who has internal conversations with themselves that go something like the one above. 

The question is DID I? 

6 x rolos = 4pp

One bite of chocolate egg = 3pp

Yeah I did, however I didn’t finish the egg, I took it downstairs and gave it to mom, because after having a debate with the greedy gremlin I decided biting into a chocolate egg would make me smile (and it did, proper made me chuckle) and I had planned on doing it the weekend, so I didn’t have to wait as I only wanted to do it once and then I can say I’ve had that experience and won’t do it again.  It didn’t mean I had to eat the rest of the egg and I’m glad to say I didn’t.  I ate the rolos and realised they’re actually not that fabulous either so I’m not cured of that.  7pp gone from my weeklies, on a positive I had 7pp on my pedometer by the end of the day yesterday which made me feel good. 

The downside to that decision was that it gave me the taste for sweetness and one of my helpers had bought in some rice crispie chocolate biscuits that she’d made with the recipe on the new chocolate cards we have in meeting, they were delicious and I ended up having 3 of them at 1pp each, they did the trick though, after that I was sated and didn’t want anything else, better still it’s out of my system and I’m not fussed about chocolate this weekend so much.  I have a white chocolate Lindt bunny that’s 15pp but there’s no rush to eat him, and my yellow chocolate rubber duck, well they jury is out on him,  I’m guessing he will just taste like very sweet chocolate, do I need to taste that, maybe if I have 8pp left to spare Sunday but if I don’t I’m not fussed, I’d rather get a weight loss and be nearer to my goal weight, 12lb left to go – watch this space, I am getting there and no inner greedy gremlin is going to veer me away from it!

Yes I will have days where life is difficult, where my emotions affect my mood but I know food does not lift the mood for long enough to make it worth gaining weight.  I can’t get that message out of my head that I blogged the other day, “if we are not nourishing ourselves in some way we are punishing ourselves”, so I’ve found that when I’m tempted to overeat or make a not so wise food choice I’m asking myself that question, “is what I’m about to eat going to nourish me in some way”.  Of course nourishing the self isn’t just about eating nutritious food, it’s sometimes about biting into a whole chocolate egg to make you smile because after all 10pp of chocolate on one day does not mean you’re punishing yourself it means you chosen to eat something yummy, eating 3lb of chocolate and making yourself feel sick, that’s punishing yourself!  Remind yourself of that this weekend.

Have a great day BeYOUtiful, I’m off to plan my meals for the day as today is a very busy one for me.

Eat Gorgeous xx