End of May.

This is me tomorrow (and Bec?), except that I'm not a Norwegian who skied to the South Pole. He finds a cache of supplies and food he buried weeks before, and forgot what was in there until he opened it up. I will find the block of Katoomba chocolate hidden in my undies drawer.

May never eat chocolate challenge.

Halfway through, hooray! Pats on the back.

It's actually getting harder because I'm more emotionally tired at the moment. And what seems cruel, someone at work keeps refilling a bowl on the kitchen table with chocolates from America. That's really unfortunate timing. First twix, then peanut butter cups, then snickers. But I am proud to say that chocolate eating has been zero, and chocolate-ish things have also been quite low: a hot chocolate on Sunday, some cookies here and there. I'm proud of myself.

No Chocolate update.

So it's been a week. And it's been fine. Tuesday night I realised that I absolutely didn't miss chocolate at all. I had a steak for dinner that night, so I was feeling particularly satisfied I admit. It was hard to go cold turkey off having a bit of chocolate after lunch with my cup of tea, but the craving is much less now. I helped by covering the m&m jar with a plastic bag, because out of sight out of mind is true. And I weaned off evening chocolate by eating my special yoghurt/cookie sundae. On Friday night I scoffed down a little packet of chocolate filled koala biscuits, but didn't realise until afterwards that I'd been eating them for the chocolate not the koala, which is why the challenge is just about avoiding chocolate bars and blocks, not chocolate in all forms because it's so impossible to be vigilant when you are hungry and someone waves asian koala biscuits at you.

I've eaten all the chocolate.

That was step one, the pre-challenge preparation, the end of April. Finish the opened chocolate and hide the unopened chocolate. Tick.

Treats.

Bought the Big Issue for the Doctor Who article. There is an article about the concept of special treats, I read it last night. It fits in with my no chocolate month. Its about when you're a kid Easter is an exciting treat because there is chocolate, but now it's like, meh, another day I can eat chocolate just like all the other days I already eat chocolate. High availability of treats means nothing is a treat. If a treat is a habit it isn't a treat. How I enjoy chocolate is very different to how Charlie Bucket enjoys chocolate, because I can eat it every day and he gets one bar a year on his birthday. Charlie Bucket has a much higher ratio of enjoyment per calorie.

Easternomics.

This year, there were a lot of hot cross buns around. At the office we bought and compared various baked goods in the leadup to easter. There is so much variation! Chocolate chip in white bread, chocolate chip in chocolate bread, fruit with orange peel, fruit without orange peel, let alone size, and ratio of raisins or chocolate chips to bread. So I've probably eaten about a dozen hot cross buns this year.

On the other hand, I went totally eggless until Easter Monday, when my flatmate gave me a couple of little leftover egg hunt eggs. I just never got around to buying chocolate just because its in the shape of a hollow egg or rabbit, cos I can get chocolate all year round anyway. And I don't know why, but Easter eggs and bunnies seem like a family thing, for kids to have a shiny chocolate stash once a year, and since I'm not a kid and I don't have kids and my parents got rid of easter egg traditions very early on, hollow chocolate wrapped in foil has fallen to the side of the road. But fresh hot cross buns are for grown-ups and for putting butter on and for sharing and and you can get them from artisan bakeries and they're limited edition and seasonal. So I focused on them.

Flake, Twirl, Twix

I like Cadbury's Flake Chocolate Bar, except that it's quite messy to eat. I recently rediscovered Twirl Bar, which is like a Flake encased in a chocolate shell. That makes it the perfect way to eat a Flake neatly. I also get Twirl and Twix mixed up because they both start with "twi", even though they're different chocolate bars and have different packaging.

Chocolate | Cheese.

My latest "Eat Less Chocolate" rule is not to buy blocks of chocolate any more. It's a fairly easy rule to follow. I can buy a single chocolate bar if I want one, but not 200g. Its a good system actually. I applied it to chips as well, when I had such a strong craving one night that I had to walk up to the shops, but I only bought a single serve package, not a big bag. Got my monthly chip hit, no leftovers to eat the next night.

Maybe as a result, or a distraction, from eating less chocolate, I seem to have swapped chocolate for cheese. There are so many nice cheeses! A square inch of cheese goes a lot further than a square inch of chocolate, so hopefully I am eating less fat overall. Possibly.

I am currently enamoured of the packaging of this new brand of cheese, Great Ocean Road. It really stands out on the supermarket shelf. It's just a sandwich cheese, not a fun cheese, but it looks special. 

The other cheese there is a fancy one, it is balls of fetta covered in dukka and swimming in olive oil. Goes well with bread and grilled vegetables and olives.

Chocolate hangover.

I'm SURE it exists. I'm sure if I eat chocolate at night, half my face doesn't wake up the next day and I'm lethargic and fuzzy-headed. It's probably the caffeine thing that happens to coffee-drinkers: your body has withdrawals in the morning and you "need" coffee to "wake up". However, where coffee is an acceptable breakfast thing, chocolate isn't.

White not-chocolate.

I'm trying to think of a better name for "white chocolate". It bites like chocolate but it isn't chocolate. I would almost say it has no right to exist at all, except that white chocolate raspberry cheesecake is one of the best desserts in the history of the universe and the future also, so really all of time and space. So it does have some good uses.

Name ideas:

White not-chocolate
White compound
White chompound
Foux white (chocolate)
White notolate

They are all lame. I'm going with the first one, until something better comes up, because at least it speaks of my protest.

Irrational

I engage in irrational behaviour and I'm not sure why.

The situation is this: I usually don't have any chocolate, biscuits or chips in the house because I am not to be trusted with them when I'm stressed.

So when I feel like doing some comfort eating, I will spend ten minutes in the kitchen opening pantry door after pantry door, opening the fridge door and freezer, several times. I basically go round and round in circles in the kitchen, opening door after door, looking for non-existent comfort food. I know it's not there because I haven't bought any and I know the contents of the pantry and fridge. Yet I still go foraging, in the vain hope I may have overlooked some biscuits. WHY?

When I finally give up, I ask, "WHY IS THERE NO CHOCOLATE/CHIPS/BISCUITS IN THE HOUSE???"

5pm giggles.

It's the end of the day. I've been laying out a book called Robot Planet. I go to save a pdf of it, and I realise that I had totally unconsciously named my layout work Robot Chocolate.

My subconscious is trying to tell me something?

Offset Dieting Update:

The fundraiser chocolate is a special case of Offset Dieting. A normal Freddo is Bad, but a fundraiser Freddo is offset by the Moral Good of buying it for mission.

Hot 'n' cold.

Cold, freshly sliced cheese is better for you than melted cheese, which is all hot and greasy. You can see the fat. Hot tea is a caffeinated drink like coffee, but iced tea is cool and refreshing like water.

Interestingly, I can eat large amounts of chocolate quite easily, but if I eat much melted chocolate I feel sick. I don't know why that would be, because it melts inside you when you eat it. But it proves my theory!