Final week

As I sit hear in the San Francisco airport, I think about the past few days traveling and the few more in front of me. When I think about my routine and chocolate consumption back home, I wondered before the trip if the hectic nature of travel would help or hurt my chocolate addiction and progress in stopping it. The change in daily routine has been helpful actually. Since I am switching timezones sometimes daily, I don't have the concept of a "morning coffee and chocolate" desire. I still find myself having the occasional chocolate drink from Starbucks but nothing regular like my low point where I was consuming at least a chocolate bar every day and sometimes more.

Week Five - Here we go

As we move into week five of the course and week four of this experiment I feel very good. I haven't been able to completely abstain, but I have made good progress in understanding my addiction and what the triggers are for me. I look forward to the final week of the experiment as it will be a point that I can either choose to continue with attempting to remove it from my diet or accept that moderate consumption of chocolate is acceptable. The entire process has been humbling as I consider the much greater addictions that people have to battle with alcohol and drugs. Here we go..

Week 3 wrap up

I think I've gotten through the stages of grief with my chocolate addiction. Since it was never a severe addiction, I have spent more time working to understand what my triggers are than the emotional issues with a complete withrdrawal. Considering I have not been able to completely remove it from my diet, I have not had to deal with a complete withdrawal as the text we are using for this class suggests is the best method for dealing with an addiction.

In the past week I have gone days without consuming chocolate. After realizing I was largely eating chocolate when in stressful situations as a coping mechanism, I did reward myself in positive and non-stressful situations to re-enforce chocolate in a positive light as opposed to only eating the substance in negative situations.

I still continue to have times when I don't even realize that I am eating chocolate as it is in a LOT of over the counter foods. For example, if I go out for frozen yogurt with the kids, I have avoided eating the chocolate flavored yogurt and deferring to the coffee flavored yogurt only to be told after that the coffee flavor had chocolate in it. grrrr.

Anyway,, overall the progress and learning has been good. I look forward to the fourth and final week of the exercise in dealing with this addiction,,, which has turned into more of a self awareness exercise in stress eating and dealing with a bad behavior.

Yay,,, almost week 1,, but week 3

Well,,, I have to say I have had a pretty good week. I went Tuesday through Friday without consuming chocolate!!!! It has been a pretty good week. I had some challenging times with some afternoon stress and temptation to each chocolate. I was effective at managing myself by eating larger lunches and switching to almonds when I needed something to eat. Now a reward of chocolate? No! I'm on a roll and intend to try to keep on going. We'll see how far I get. Until tomorrow.

Week 2 learnings

Well, week two of my chocolate addiction battle comes to a close. New things I've learned this week are that I tend to eat chocolate when I either am not eating enough during the day or under stress. I have tried combating the prior with eating larger and healthier meals. The stress is another issue to figure out though. As I sit here writing this post on sunday afternoon, I realize I've gone the entire day without consuming chocolate and no need to either. That tells me that I could in theory cut it out of my life, but stress is a major contributor to why I eat it. Maybe this week I can figure out what it is that I think I feel when I eat it that makes the stress diminish?

I also started to do more research on the good and bad of eating chocolate. I have mostly found articles describing the good impacts of eating chocolate but think maybe I was just looking for the good articles and maybe I should look for articles focused on the negative impacts.

Overall a good week. I've still not yet gone more than a couple days without eating chocolate, but I am getting better about not choosing to eat it and I usually realize it after the fact that something I ate had chocolate in it but it wasn't an obvious ingredient.

More growth in the coming week I am sure. Stay tuned...

I've fallen off the wagon

It is official,,,, I've officially fallen off of the wagon when it comes to my chocolate addiction. Today I just walked into a starbucks and saw that they had something called a "salted caramel chocolate mocha" drink on the menu and I purchased it. In my defense I had recently read this article which discusses all of the health benefits of consuming dark chocolate. Not only does it have antioxidants that are good for the body, dark chocolate also contains minerals that are good for the body. Dark chocolate also "has reduced blood pressure, improved blood flow, showed mild anti-clotting effects and may help prevent plaque formation in arteries. Read about the research on chocolate and your heart."

I appear to still be in the justification phase of grieving. Tomorrow I plan to make another attempt at stopping my consumption of chocolate. And hopefully I don't get tempted by the evil starbucks empire ;) again.

Psychology Today

The October 2012 edition of the magazine Psychology Today has an article entitled "Fudging It" which discusses the merits of eating chocolate. As I continue on with my attempt at removing chocolate, and go through a a mini version of the five steps of grief, I find myself at the bargaining phase. I am looking for any reason to continue eating chocolate. As I read the article the case was made for the unsweetened version of cocoa that has a very high flavonol content that apparently helps people focus and have a clearer thought process.

I continue down the path of stumbling to remove chocolate from my diet and then working through the stages of grief at the same time. For the record, I have yet to go more than a couple days without slipping, either by accident (some ingredient in a food) or on purpose when I just throw my hands up during stressful periods or other.

I am struggling to find the value in removing chocolate from my diet completely, but will continue with this journaling exercise for the course as I see the value in the self discovery and at the very least the education I am going through as I try to rationalize the food in my diet.

more to come :)

Five Stages of Grief
http://psychcentral.com/lib/2006/the-5-stages-of-loss-and-grief/

Health Benefits of eating Chocolate
http://www.healthdiaries.com/eatthis/10-health-benefits-of-chocolate.html

Flavonols
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavonols

Week 2, Day 1

As I start week two, I got excited about the progress I've made thus far. That was until I realized that I ate frozen yogurt with my son today and one of the flavors had real chocolate in it. I thought I was on day three of my chocolate sobriety and unfortunately this was another set back. I will do better tomorrow I am sure. I do like it has been easier over the past couple of days, but as I've realized, eating chocolate seems to be triggered by stress and over the weekend I don't have much stress. Sooo, we'll see how things go tomorrow on the first day back at work.

Location:Highlands Ranch, CO

Week 1 wrap-up

Overall the week went well I think. I made some unintentional mistakes early in the week, had a couple good days, and did make a conscious choice one day to have chocolate. The last couple days have been very good though. It wasn't as hard as I though to stop eating chocolate. I have been snacking more on the candy mints that the office offers. Seeing myself do that though, I've tried to be better about changing my eating patterns so that I don't crave a snack in the late afternoon before heading home. I will sometimes have a larger lunch or two smaller lunches so that I eat again mid-afternoon. The one day that I did cave in and decide to eat chocolate, I did notice that that particular day I was a little stressed. I'll have to keep that in mind over the next three weeks as I make choices and figure out ways to solve the problem.

Overall, a good week. Good learning about myself and triggers and how to help myself make better choices.

Week 1, Day 4

Day four went pretty well. No chocolate was consumed and I got through most of the day without sugar in general. The end of day three was not so good though. I ended up snacking late in the afternoon, which is when I usually get hungry. I ended up eating a handful of mini chocolate pieces equating to about a single chocolate bar. I felt bad and like a failure after I gave in to my temptation for the chocolate. I do feel better at the end of day four that I made it through the whole day without consuming chocolate. So, on the positive, I made some real progress today. It has taken me close to four days to get to the point where I did not consume chocolate at least for one day. We'll see how it goes tomorrow...

Week 1, Day 3

Week 1, Day 3:

At yesterday's monthly company birthday party, I walked into the lunch room to find a chocolate cake. My first thought was that I was disappointed that I wasn't going to be having any cake today, but then realized that I had remembered not to eat chocolate. I was happy about that. Later in the gathering, I was mentioning to a colleague that I was not eating chocolate any more. He pointed out that as I was taking a scoop of ice cream and eating it, that it had chocolate chips in it. My first thought was yes,, I unintentionally failed again.

Initially I thought this challenge would be easy. Remove chocolate. Sure, that should be easy,, I only eat those little chocolate mini bars once or twice a day. It will be hard, but I think I can do it. What I've quickly realized is that chocolate is in a LOT of things. Later in the day yesterday, the family ended up at a local eatery called Freddy's. When the family was looking at the list of sundaes that the restaurant offers, I realized that all but one of them had chocolate in them. Another good and bad feeling moment. Good I realized it, but sad that I realized how chocolate is everywhere.

I write this as lunch approaches again today and am feeling pretty good about my progress. Not by conscious choices, but have been almost chocolate free for three days. I haven't consciously chosen to eat chocolate, which is a huge step forward. Looking forward to finishing this day without consuming my favorite sweet :)

Week 1, Day 2

Week 1, Day 2:

Well, I didn't do as well as I thought on my first day. When my wife realized I had already started this endeavor, she said "You know you just ate chocolate ice cream?". After we debated on the merit of whether or not chocolate ice cream really included chocolate, I agreed that I had actually,,, unintentionally slipped on my first day :(

After agreeing that I had actually eaten chocolate in the ice cream form, I then quickly degraded into frustration and into the logic of "well I already ate chocolate,, ,why not continue", but stopped myself and did not actually eat any other chocolate yesterday.

It is already mid-morning on day two and I am almost to the lunch hour. New for me is that I would have already gotten into work, setup my black coffee and had the equivalent of a chocolate bar with that cup of coffee. My work has a big jar of these mini chocolates that are free for anyone to take. For a while I thought "Oh,, it's only five little pieces", but when I did the math on the weight of those pieces I was eating about a bar with that cup of coffee.

I have confidence that making it almost to lunch time I can make it to lunch.

Stand-by...

Chocoholics anonymous

Week 1; Day 1:

I have chosen my addiction to chocolate to try to give up for the next four weeks for a psychology course I am taking. I don't know when the addiction started. What I do know is that over the past four or five years, since my children were out of diapers and old enough to start to take more care of themselves, I've had more time to get my physical health back under control. When my wife got pregnant I did what most parents do and put all my time and energy into the kids and forgot about my own health for a few years. As I've worked to get my health back in line, I dropped about fifty to sixty pounds and recently completed my first full marathon. In that process I have cleaned up my diet as well and have cut out almost all junk food,,, with the exception of chocolate. It's the one food vice I still have left. I have a few other vices that I have which are coffee in the morning and I do like to have the occasional cocktail with friends on the weekends. I have found some early research that dark chocolate is better for you, so I do try to eat that when possible. But chocolate is the vice I would like to try to give up for the class project and also as a personal experiment.

I am a believer that people substitute one bad addiction for a healthier option. Case in point, I don't eat nearly as much as I did when the kids were younger, but I run daily at least three miles and I get cranky when I don't run. Yes, I substituted a substance (food) addiction for a process (running) addiction. This experiment will be fun to watch as I remove one addiction,, can I truly remove it or will I replace it with something else?