Abstinence

One of my main trigger foods is chocolate.  9 times out of ten it is chocolate that puts the skids on any healthy eating and exercise regime I am trying to follow.  After starting to read the steps of Over-eaters Anonymous before Xmas I began to wonder if abstaining from this temptation was the only way I could move forward with any new eating choices.

So my (only) new years resolution for this year was to abstain from eating chocolate at all.  To be fair this was all going really well for me until I started to think of other foods I could binge on that didn't involve chocolate.  Mainly cookies, cheese on toast, jam doughnuts, biscuits and takeaways.  Once i saw the weight wasn't coming off I began to want the chocolate back, after all, if I was going to have excess calories they might as well be in the form of my beloved chocolate?

So last week I ate chocolate for the first time in months and since then I have consumed a whole cadburys Easter gateau, a chocolate buttons Easter egg, a mini eggs eater egg, some Hotel Chocolate eater truffles, 2 cadburys creme eggs, a hello kitty Easter egg and a cadburys creme egg large Easter egg.  Not to mention all the other crap which included a donner kebab pizza.  Last night I woke up feeling sick as a pig and threw up.

Now I am back to hating myself for my utter lack of self control.  And yet for 3+ months I managed to go without it and although i didn't loose a great amount of weight 8lbs is better than nothing.

This most recent debacle has lead me to two conclusions:

1. I need to control when and how I eat my trigger foods e.g. chocolate.  Abstaining does not work completely but if I can make it work for, say a month at a time and then have a controlled treat this could work
2. there was something that happened last week which made me decide to binge on a food which i had managed to avoid for three months
1. I ate out twice, once at an all you can eat buffet. I felt discouraged and jealous as my thin attractive sister sat there eating chips and cheesecake which I didn't have.  
2. I felt that I had thrown away all my hard work that week by having two meals out and that I wasn't going to loose any weight so why bother
3. My husband left me on my own to go out to football, historically one of my nights when I really binge
4. we're trying for a baby but haven't had sex in over a month. I'm so unattractive he doesn't want sex with me.  In fact I don't want him to see me naked anyway. But i do want a baby and I do love him.

No chocolate from tomorrow then until end of April. Weigh-in tomorrow morning to see the damage.  I'll be keeping a food-emotion diary this week to see if I can identify the particular feelings which cause me to eat.

If you're interested in reading the steps and traditions of overeaters anonymous this is the book i'm currently reading The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous