serious chocolate addiction

chrissym

I have literally just eaten a 200g bar of chocolate. I eat a lot carb paleo diet all the time, but chocolate just kills me! I regularly eat 200+ grammes, every day nearly. If I get it out of the house i will go mad fidgeting and end up going out to buy some. I buy a lot, hide it in my room, eat in secret...

Last summer I cut out all sweets for 2 months and I haven't been able to maintain that since. I'm gonna try again when my exam is over Monday...

Is there anyone out there thus afflicted?

Oryx

Are you hungry? If your diet is otherwise poor or restricted you could be getting cravings because of that. But if its purely a chocolate/sugar addiction you're going to have to rely on willpower to overcome it. It will ease after the initial stages but make sure the rest of your diet is balanced and that youre eating enough.

chrissym

I eat a lot, I am always hungry though. But I eat filling meals, lots of veg, a few nuts, good bit of meat. I eat potatoes and sometimes rice, and I've tried eating rice to ward off chocolate cravings cos I thought it was a carb thing...but then I eat it anyway!

COH

Dont buy it and you wont eat it

starfish90

Maybe look at your carbohydrate intake-I've started incorporating more carbs and it definitely eliminates those sugar cravings.......or else its all in my head........

Precious flower

You need to just force yourself to stop and go cold turkey. If you're anything like me you only need a small amount to set you off. Dialling back the amount won't work that's for certain. After a day or two you won't even crave it, though your may need longer given the quantities you are eating. I bet that's the way you did it when you stayed off it for two months, am I right? Because your diet is otherwise healthy it is merely just habit and the sugar hit you are after.

You need to get force some will power by not buying some at the shop and keeping it out of your house. Whenever you get a craving ask yourself "Why am I feeling like this? I'm not hungry so why do I want it?" also "How will I feel after I eat that bar? Will I feel better? Will I feel happy? Or will I feel angry and disappointed in myself? I want to be happy so I'm not going to eat it. I'm doing this for myself no one else, to feel good. I don't want/need it. It won't make a difference"

It's best to ban it completely for a few weeks or even a month and then if you can, introduce it slowly, starting with dark chocolate as a substitute. Only if you think you can. In fact you may just only be able to stick with dark chocolate (70% or above). The other stuff is processed muck anyway. But it is good to be able to go to a birthday party or over to friends and enjoy a small bit of chocolate (dark or milk chocolate) without losing the plot.
Also do not replace chocolate with crisps or any of that thinking that "Well at least it's not chocolate." Cut out the junk food completely, as eating other types of junk food could trigger a binge.

You could also slip a rubber band around your wrist when you head out to the shops. If you get an urge to buy chocolate, snap the band against your wrist, every time. It'll hurt and your body may begin to associate that thought with something unpleasant and unwanted which may help you resist the craving in shops. It'll also wake you up and force you to focus on why you're really there. Don't go shopping hungry either as that will make your cravings ten times worse.

Also when you say you're hungry all the time, given your diet, are you sure it's hunger and not boredom?

Nervous Wreck

COH wrote: »

Dont buy it and you wont eat it

Sometimes the simplest advice is the best.

delthedriver

Replace the chocolate with fruit, banannas, apples, grapes, blueberries.


Always had a fondness for chocolate, in the past would have raided the fridge during the night.


Get out for good walk everyday and introduce the fruit into your diet, don't buy any chocolate.


Since I commenced this regime last October, I have ,kicked the chocolate habit, increased my fitness level and reduced my cholesterol !


Chocolate is now a treat, tbh I have lost interest in chocolate. Last Saturday night I failed to eat a chocolate desert


You can do it !

Precious flower

You also have to learn that you can't justify having chocolate just because you are stressed. You should have made a point to drop the habit while you were doing your exams. Otherwise when another stress laden situation raises it's head you'll head straight for the chocolate. You need to deal with stress in a positive way, like going for a run, exercising or doing yoga. Part of healthy eating means that you have to be able to deal with a rough day without running to sweets or chocolate.

I only saw the second time that I read your post that you are doing paleo. Maybe as someone says you need to up your fruit intake and not be so strict with the paleo diet. being low carbohydrates on a constant basis cannot be sustainable long term surely? Maybe paleo is not for you maybe you're a person who just naturally needs more carbohydrates in your diet. On a side note, the paleo diet bothers me to a certain extent as I disagree with the amount of meat eating it encourages. At a time when we are experiencing climate change I don't think people should be eating more meat. A more away from eating meat that takes up huge amount of land to sustain is what we should be doing. But anyway, that's going off topic and I'm not a vegetarian so I can't really talk!:o

Alf Veedersane

The best advice given is not to have it on the house. If it's not at hand, you won't have it.

But if you're struggling mentally giving it up then you need to ask yourself why. Cold turkey is your best bit buy getting to the bottom of why you need to will help you stay off it on the longer term and ultimately just have a normal amount rather than ALL the chocolate

olivepeach

I have the same problem. I eat chocolates daily. I have lost track of how much I consume in a day . Its like the chocolate playing my diet crasher.

I recently installed this carrot app. Its hilarious at the same time shames you into not eating . This works for me at the moment .

zubair

I'm a chocoholic as well and I had to give up chocolate all together for 3 months before I could reintroduce it and be in control. It takes me a week to finish a standard bar now and I only eat dark chocolate 70%+ cocoa. I just have a piece every now and again. Use your will power!

You're obviously already aware that eating this much chocolate is bad but this might help put it into perspective. Remember this each time you are about to finish a 200g bar. The 200g bar you had is almost 50% of your calorie allowance for the day and contains more than 100% of the recommended sugar intake for the day.


Dairy Milk Chocolate Bar

45g

Calories 240

Calories from Fat 121

Total Fat 13.4g 21%

Saturated Fat 8.3g 41%

Sodium 400mg 17%

Carbohydrates 25.7g 9%

Dietary Fiber 0.3g

Sugars 25.5g

Protein 3.4g


200g

Calories 1067

Calories from Fat 538

Total Fat 59.556g 93%

Saturated Fat 36.889g 182%

Sodium 1778mg 76%

Carbohydrates 114.222g 40%

Dietary Fiber 1.333g 4%

Sugars 113.333g

Protein 15.111g

Batgurl

I was I told whenever I'm craving chocolate to go and have a large glass of cold water and brush your teeth.

The water fills you temporarily and the minty taste dulls the tastebuds craving chocolate. Works for me except I drink cold green tea instead of water.

Triceratops Ballet

Oh I'm your sister here, though I'm working to quit! like you I wouldn't think twice about picking up a 200g bar a night, in the past I have bought myself easter eggs prior to easter an scoffed them in one sitting. I have no ability to control the amount I eat at all, if its there I will eat it (even if it doesn't belong to me)
I see a counselor for other issues I have but it has come up, and we discussed how the brain reacts to the combination of sugar and fat and how it produces the hit in your brain chemistry. So I had to try a couple of things to give up the first was cold turkey which went ok for a while, but eventually I would cave. One thing that has worked for me is apple slices with homemade peanut butter (not sure how this fits in with a paleo diet). Its hitting a lot of the same buttons as chocolate but is not as bad for you. So you have the sugar in the apples the salt and fat in the peanut butter, but also get fibre and protein so its a more balanced alternative and I look forward to it in the same way I would look forward to a bar of chocolate.
It sounds very dramatic, but I don't know if I will be able to go back to eating chocolate ever, because once I start I just can't stop, people are always amazed at my capacity to eat it, so for the time being the plan is to just stay away from it altogether and find something else to fill its place.

Clearlier

I stopped eating fructose towards the end of November. I had tried giving up chocolate before but found myself eating packets of biscuits so I gave up biscuits and suddenly developed an unhealthy interest in Ben and Jerry's. When I tried to give up all the "bad" sugars (chocolate, sweets, biscuits, cake, sweetened yoghurt etc.) I ate fruit in huge quantities.

It's still hard, I get regular cravings but I've lasted a couple of months this time compared to a day or at most two for all of my previous attempts during the past year. There were two things that have made a big difference.

1. I've stopped eating most fruit (still eat tomatoes when cooked) - for me it was like a gateway drug, It intensified my cravings for chocolate etc. Fruit is not necessary for a healthy diet, vegetables are a better option.

2. Somebody at work had already done this. She knew that I was going to try it too and in a very pleasant way asked me how I was getting on. It helped me that I didn't want to tell her that I had given in.

FouxDaFaFa

Like Zubair, milk chocolate used to be my issue. I wasn't a big snacker (no crisps, fizzy drinks, non-chocolate sweets) but I really made up for it with milk chocolate and ate a lot of it.

I switched to dark chocolate with some of the "fun" flavours, like chilli and orange. I got to like the taste and gradually went darker and darker until 85%, which is what I eat now.

You'll eat much less of a dark chocolate bar than milk and I find now that if I eat milk chocolate it doesn't taste the same anymore. I don't know the science behind it but when I try a bar of cadbury's now, it tastes sickly sugary.

Maybe you could try dark chocolate if you don't feel you'd be able to cut it out altogether?

helliwen

While I think cutting out the chocolate (and maybe other sweet stuff, if you're eating any - even dried fruits) for a while can be helpful in order to do a kind of "reset", I think in the long-term believing that you're addicted to chocolate, that you can't eat it in moderation, that you can't trust yourself around it etc. etc. is going to do you more harm than good.

As soon as you label a food as "bad" or "addicting", you tend to develop either more cravings for it or fears around it. And willpower is limited - you don't want to be relying on it long term. I've been there.

After the cold turkey period, why not buy it and have it in the house. Allow yourself to have some every day. Eat it mindfully. You don't have to eat the whole thing - you can have more tomorrow if you like.

You may be surprised at how long a single bar can last when you change the way you think of it. You may find that you don't even like the taste of it any more. It's just chocolate, just food. It doesn't have any evil magical power that makes you inhale it against your will.

All of this needs to be done calmly and mindfully though. If you're stressed, it's not gonna work. Like other posters have suggested, try to address what's going on in the background (eating enough, stress reduction, unnecessary diet restrictions, whatever). Good luck. It's worth it.

miezekatze

FouxDaFaFa wrote: »

Like Zubair, milk chocolate used to be my issue. I wasn't a big snacker (no crisps, fizzy drinks, non-chocolate sweets) but I really made up for it with milk chocolate and ate a lot of it.

I switched to dark chocolate with some of the "fun" flavours, like chilli and orange. I got to like the taste and gradually went darker and darker until 85%, which is what I eat now.

You'll eat much less of a dark chocolate bar than milk and I find now that if I eat milk chocolate it doesn't taste the same anymore. I don't know the science behind it but when I try a bar of cadbury's now, it tastes sickly sugary.

Maybe you could try dark chocolate if you don't feel you'd be able to cut it out altogether?

I agree with this, it's helped me a lot. It's a lot easier to cut down on chocolate like this, and dark chocolate feels a lot more intense than dairy milk and other really sweet chocolate with less cocoa in it. If it's not the sugar you're addicted to but the cocoa then that might work.

nearzero

Paul McKenna (the TV hypnotist guy) gives great NLP style techniques for beating cravings and breaking habits of craving your favourite food.

Look them up on youtube - they are very helpful! I found them great! There is also an app you can download