Some people have asked me how I started my weight loss. My first few months in the blog archive explain it all.

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Just Don't Do It


I hope I am not reaching you too late.

You know who you are. You are the ladies who look forward to Halloween more than the children. Any excuse for treats is a good excuse, you know what I mean...

"Oooh, I know children love Almond Joy's, I need to get the king size bag." Or "Reeses Peanut Butter Cups? Need to stock up on those, the little hooligans might egg my house if I don't give them chocolate". "No one likes a house without chocolate bars."

We are all guilty. I know because I use every reason I can to buy "fun-size" chocolate bars. I like fun, I like chocolate, we match. It doesn't help any when they are everywhere, the drug store, the grocery store, Target, Wallmart, Costco. Every day, sometimes twice a day I am faced with the spontaneous desire to stock up on candy bars. This urge is much stronger and for some reason makes more sense than the urge to buy wheat for a years supply.

We aren't fooling anyone, most kids would rather eat a bag of sour patch kids over Twix. It is strange, but give them the choice between chocolate bars or jaw breakers they will go for the potentially dangerous jaw breaker, they live life on the edge. They are odd. It is a definite generation gap. They do not have the consuming need or desire for chocolate, your desire to buy it is for you, not your neighbors kids you don't even like. I in fact find that I save the good stuff for me and give the obnoxious neighbors the bottle caps and tootsie rolls.

Don't do it, do not buy candy you like, if you grab it and put it in your cart - stop - throw it out right there in the aisle with a dramatic toss and a banshee scream. Buy a bag of dum dums. If you already have the stuff in your house it is time to make gift bags for the ladies you visit teach (the skinny ones, let them deal with it) and deliver it right away. Donate it to the Bishop for his candy jar - that is an expensive thing to keep full. Or, if it is a real emergency you can flush it.

You don't need to taste it, you already know it is yummy, you have tasted it before. It isn't like you are embarking on a new experience. (If however you have never had Tobolarone, by all means...) You aren't denying yourself the experience if you have already had it. "Been there, done that" is what you should say.

Treat it like Kryptonite, Poison, "Danger Will Robinson!" Alarms should sound. When you were a kid playing with magnets, didn't you try to see how close you could get them before they snapped together? Ultimately at the end of the experience they become one. We ladies and chocolate are like those magnets, get one king size bag of snickers and us on a bad day and SNAP! we are one. At about 3:00 I find myself hunting unconsciously for the spawn of Satan candy. If it is there and I am there, we always end up together. I would be fooling myself if I invited the stuff into my home and said he was just visiting the kids. NOT TRUE.

When I put my gloved hand into mud I do not say the mud got all glovey (I heard that somewhere and have been dying to use it) , When I put chocolate into my mouth I cannot say the chocolate got all Calamity, I get all chocolaty, I will reap what I sow, I will instantly put on weight (do you know you can gain 5 lbs in just one bad week? - experience teaches me that)

Don't fool yourself, don't do it, just say no - buy the sour skittles, they are nasty, just what kids love.

16 comments:

Heffalump said...

I like the sour patch kids, and the swedish fish too...but I like the chocolate more.
This time of year is always hard, but even harder is the few days after Halloween when it all goes on clearance...maybe I should lock myself in the house that week and not come out for anything!

Yvonne said...

Great advice. Halloween is always tough for me.

Amy said...

Mmmmm. Chocolate... Mmmmm. Mini chocolate bars that fit perfectly in that little corner of my purse...
STAY AWAY!

Thank you for the reminder. Maybe I will give those mini bags of popcorn this year. Those don't tempt me AT ALL.

P.S. I got my morning walk in today and ran for 2 WHOLE minutes. Hey, I have to start somewhere!

Marc and Megan said...

Oh, all this talk of chocolate just reminded me of the bag of Reeses Peanut Butter Cups I hid in our cupboard last week. Must.... fight.... the.... urge..... to.... eat.... chocolate.... for.... breakfast......

Rebecca Blevins said...

Great post! I've been averting my gaze from the piles and piles of chocolate candy bags at Walmart. Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, M&Ms, you name it! I feel defiant as I walk past. I won't be buying any candy I would like this year.

My husband did find a Lindt bar of 85% cocoa, and it's pretty good. Only 5 grams of carbohydrate per serving. Lots of fat, but for me the sugar's worse. Rather bitter, but that's great because I can only eat a bit before I reach chocolate saturation.

Regular milk chocolate, though...I could eat mountains of that before quitting!

Kimberly Vanderhorst said...

Hee hee...guess what I bought? Yep. Sour skittles. I is feelin' so smart!

C Hansen said...

As a rule I can't read long posts on a blog... but I love yours!! They seem to hit home everytime... I'm doing good this year with refraining from buying all my favorite chocolates. But...I can't be so sure about when my kids bring home their candy bags... I have to go through them before they can imbibe of course and those almond joys look mighty dangerous. They may choke on an almond or something.. have to pull those out ... purely for saftey reasons right?

Natalie said...

Good advice! We already bought our Halloween candy--Dum Dums and tootsie roll pops. My 2 year old loves them, so I used that as my excuse to not get chocolate. Plus if I give in to my sweet tooth with those it's not such a big deal.

Calamity Jane said...

Dear Girls, I am so glad that this helped you. I was faced with an akward situation, while I was at costco there were the chocolate bars next to the stupid candy, I hesitated, I paused and grabbed the stupid candy. It worked, I am a freakin literary genius. Unbelievable.

Denise said...

Mini candy bars and the women who love them. My downfall is, hey, automatic portion control! Everyone says, "don't deny yourself! Just have one or two bites instead of the whole thing!" So a mini candy bar should be perfect, right? It only has two bites in it.

But that's assuming you stop at one candy bar. *sigh* Thanks for the extra kick in the pants. I never buy Halloween candy early, because I *will* eat it all. And usually I buy stuff I like, because who wants leftovers of yucky junk? Me, apparently. I'm going to take your advice.

KellyLady said...

I've been thinking about Halloween for weeks now...and have decided that anything the kids won't eat is getting chucked that night and anything still lingering after 2 days is going the same direction. And we're all planning on trick-or-treating so I don't think I'm even going to buy candy. oh yeah, Cliff wants me to add that chocolate isn't that bad - but he's a guy...they just dont' get it!

Camille said...

It's so hard to stay away from all the Halloween candy. It is so yummy and it is EVERYWHERE! I'm grateful for your advice and I will definitely buy something like candy corn or smarties, something that won't tempt me. Last year after trick or treating, I let my kids eat their hearts out for a day or two and then I shipped all that Satan candy off to my missionary brother. He loved it and it saved me from gaining 5 pounds.

mindyluwho said...

Halloween...just the start of the holiday splurging! Thanks for the tips. One thing I do to get rid of my kids candy fast is to offer them money for it. I tell them they can pick out 10 pieces and I will pay them $5-10 bucks for the rest. Most of them will go for it. Then I throw the rest away. I figure I'd rather give them a little money now and save myself the huge dentist bill later! If they don't go for the money I tell them they have x amount of days to eat it up and whats left goes in the trash! It gets it out of the house so I don't end up picking through it.

Janice said...

When tempted in manners exactly as you have so very eloquently captured, I fall back on a little phrase... "THIS MATTERS!" It works in so many aspects of my life! I think I should really post on all the ways... soon! Thanks !

Kristen said...

Well I have already ruined it for me this year. I have shopped for candy twice already this year and it wasn't one bag at a time. I totally purchased the kind I like. I guess I need more will power here. Although I resisted the urge to go crazy last night when we had chocolate fondue for mutual. The fruit alone looked so much better.

Lucy said...

It's true. I bought my kids a bag of sour skittles at least two months ago and it remains in my pantry. I bought some chocolate truffles for bookgroup, wasn't able to go, and they are almost gone. SO much work to do.

Thanks for the reminder. I haven't bought Halloween candy yet. I like buying nerds and suckers for the very reasons you mentioned. The problem is, my kids GET those Reeses Peanut Butter Cups/Butterfingers and Almond Joys, choose the sour skittles and suckers and nerds and there is a pumpkin full of temptation for me! If only the world united and we only bought hard candy!