The Results of Giving Up

So last week, I vowed to give up chocolate. Did you know that I love chocolate? Did you know that every day during the workweek after lunch, I eat three to five Hershey’s special dark kisses? Every. Day. Did you know that if there is any kind of dessert available to me, by default, I will pick the chocolate one 99% of the time?

But not last week. Every day about 2 PM, I would finish my lunch and then just sit there and think about how much I wanted my chocolate. When I got home, I thought about how much I wanted chocolate. When I went to the grocery store, or the pharmacy, or the gas station, I thought about how much I wanted chocolate. When I worked at the high school graduation reception on Sunday, and looked at all the leftover desserts they were offering to everyone, I wanted the chocolate ones. Like these:

No, those weren’t for me; I took them home to my kids. As difficult as it was, and I assure you that it was, I did, indeed, go an entire week without chocolate.

I tried to find healthier options, instead of just replacing chocolate with some other crap. I ate a banana after lunch instead of chocolate most days. I still ate plenty of carrots and cucumbers for snacks, and sometimes I had unsweetened applesauce. I also bought myself a big pack of gum, which is really ridiculous, because I am a person who doesn’t chew gum. Or rather, I’ll chew it for 60 seconds and then spit it out, but it would help with the cravings a little. Not a lot, but a little.

I really had no idea how much chocolate is ingrained into my life until I took it away for a week.  Still, as hard as it was, I did it–for an entire week, I went without chocolate.  I swear, there should be some kind of medal for that! 😛 I also tracked everything, all week.  When I had a few pretzels to keep myself from eating chocolate, I tracked them. The Teddy Grahams I bought at Meijer to replace the Ferrero Rocher that I wanted instead–yep, tracked that, too.  The shortbread cookie that I had in place of the chocolate cupcake…tracked.  I was really proud of myself this week, and the scale showed it.  Oh wait…

My exact words when I stepped on the scale were, “Are you f*cking kidding me?” I think that was a reasonable response, don’t  you?

If you’re keeping track, I now weight 6.4 pounds more than I did when I left for vacation.  But more importantly, I’m two pounds heavier than I was when I got back from vacation! :/  Seriously?!  I don’t know what’s going on, I really don’t.  However, I can tell you that I have given up on the ridiculous notion that I should give up chocolate.  I am never doing that again.

Because I hate being pessimistic (even though I’m not feeling overly positive right now), let’s end with some happy pictures.

Sunrise on Wednesday morning at the end of my run.

Friday morning sunrise.  I love that the days are getting longer!

I ran 7 miles with my girlfriends on Saturday; this was the sunrise in their neighborhood. Not as nice as my sunrises, but it’ll do. And then finally, my favorite picture from the last week…

That’s a very happy lacrosse player after scoring his first high school lacrosse goal. That’s my boy!!

Thanks for reading. Hope you have a great week…meanwhile, I’ll be over here eating chocolate. 😛

PS:  In other more positive news, I finished all my vacation trip reports for those who are interested.