A daily struggle

After more than two years of eating clean, and about a year of maintaining my weight loss, I am amazed that each day I have to struggle a little bit with obsessive eating and the temptations of inappropriate food. Ninety percent of my daily diet is great, perfect really. My problems don't occur with meals--I know what to eat and I like it. It's the Other. The extra little nibbles, which can so quickly and easily turn into extended nibbles, even mini-binges. My main problem is candy (and sometimes cookies) at work. My co-workers insist on putting out goodies (which I'm sure they over-indulge in), and sometimes I just can't help having one. Which often becomes two, three, four. Each taste of sweet forbidden sugar prompts me to have another taste. When you add in the high stress levels of my job, a bowl of chocolate kisses becomes irresistible. It's even worse if I'm hungry, for example while cooking dinner. Then I find myself almost incapable of resisting the grazing and snacking.

Amazingly, in one episode like this (on Saturday), my body actually kicked in to help me deal with the effects of cravings and grazing. I ate a lot of chocolate that day. My recollection is several pieces of the 50-calorie variety, plus a whole chocolate bar accounting for 250 calories in itself. Then my mother came over and we each had a piece of peanut butter pie that I had in my freezer. The cool thing is, I got full. I got so full from this candy eating that I did not want dinner (and in fact, did not eat dinner). My body had enough, and told me so.