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?