The potato chips are gone! I sent them packing! They hit the road to tempt folks at my boyfriend’s work. I feel guilty pawning off unhealthy calories onto innocent bystanders like that, but I figure that not everyone in the world is trying to maintain a calorie deficit right now, and try as I might I can’t stay away from potato chips for long!
In recently months I have been experimenting with keeping treats around. For so long they just weren’t allowed either by my parents or by self imposed rules that I managed to keep in place for about ten years after moving out of my parent’s house. So many things became forbidden fruit, which made them all the more tempting…
When I moved in with some friends three years ago they kept so many treats in their house! I would munch on cookies and candy and beer at 1 in the morning when I got home from the job I hated passionately and that didn’t even cover my basic bills. The food was the only thing that made me feel happy (I was going through an awful break up at the time too. AND my cat died. All was unwell in my world). That is when I started to gain weight. These friends I was staying with are very small, and a healthy sizes even though I had always exercised so much more than they did. So, my general sad state of mind aside, I thought maybe since they kept treats around they became less of a taboo and thus less of a temptation.
I have since discovered that keeping cookies and some dark chocolate in the house really does work well for me. I never go crazy with them anymore. I have at most 3 cookies (they are small ginger snaps) at a time or a small square of chocolate. I’m really glad I have gotten over that irrational behavior around sweets -- eating them secretly in the dark -- that I used to have. I have tried to make chips less tempting in the same fashion, but that has officially been declared a failure! I can’t do it with chips. I managed to avoid them yesterday, but that strength of will power is not something I could maintain for long. It’s the salty, crunchy, oily addictiveness of them! I can only have chips on special occasions from now on. They aren’t allowed in my house!
It’s interesting how much of a learning process this diet bet really ended up being. I thought it would be some casual thing; put up a few bucks… maybe get it back. Yet here I am blogging, and musing, and dealing with emotions and motivational ups and downs constantly. I guess that’s a good thing I’m learning so much, I’m just so surprised at myself. :-)