Chocolate and I have a long history together. Even after almost three months apart I still get a pretty intense craving for it's sweet smoothness, and as soon as it touches my lips the cravings get even more intense.
This week at work I have been eating some of the chocolate candy we have hanging out at the front desk. Go figure, the stash is located at my desk in particular. So, a few times a day my co-workers are coming by to get a piece or two. This is no good for me. For the first few weeks I did really well in resisting the temptation... which was helped by the labels all saying that they contained tree nuts (as discussed in an earlier post). Forget about it. Ever since the Ghiradelli showed up I've been a really bad girl, eating at least a few pieces every day, and about mid-day today (on my day off) I was stressing out and tired and got myself a bar of it. The espresso flavored dark is truly sinful, it's so good. And, yet again, the Ghiradelli went over just fine with my gallbladder and stomach which only makes it worse for this very addicted chocoholic!!!! I wish I would have an allergic reaction or something so that I have incentive to not eat it! Ugh! At least I kept myself to a single serving size of chocolate, unlike my pre-GB issue days when I would eat the whole thing in one sitting. Yeah. The chocolate addiction is that bad... and I still would want more.
Chocolate wasn't the only bad thing I ate today. I also ate chips and salsa as a snack. While this may seem harmless to anyone else, for me, the extra meal can put extra stress on my GB and the corn in the chips also is rough on the gallbladder. Surprisingly, that went over fine, too! Does this mean I'm getting better? Well, maybe, but my stomach did finally start to revolt on me with some nausea after dinner. I probably would have been fine if I hadn't done dessert, but I was being bad today because my brother-in-law was visiting.
Which brings me to another subject- the strong association I have with eating and family get togethers/celebrations. Growing up, eating was the central focus of all of our family get togethers: holidays, graduations, out of town relatives visiting, etc. The main discussion of any event was what are we eating and who is bringing what? Unfortunately, I have an extended family full of wonderful home cooks who all can whip up some pretty darn tasty food, no matter the occasion. Get togethers were spent with hours of appetizers, followed by a full dinner, and an extravagant dessert of some sort. Not to mention, while eating the appetizers my aunts and female cousins and I would all sit around the table of appetizers eating while we socialized. Family and food (and overeating) go hand in hand for me, and even though I made a great effort to make everything healthy today I still ended up binging throughout the day.
I think that changing this habit and mindset is going to take a while, and perhaps I need to work a lot more on the emotional side of things to break the compulsion to prepare an extravagant spread (seriously, you should have seen me at the grocery store stocking up on snacks and food this morning, just for the three of us) before I can truly change those habits. For me, it is very much tied in to the need to please people and win their love and affection with food, because, truthfully, that was the only form of love I really knew growing up. I've spent 29 years feeling and expressing love and affection through food, and it might just take another 29 to learn how to feel and express love in other ways. Recognizing this, I think, is a start in the right direction.
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