Chocolate and Beyond

The Science of Chocolate

Is there one, really? Well if there isn't, there should be! And The BBC online Science & Nature magazine certainly make their way to creating a Science of Chocolate with the articles, quizzes and information they have on this section.

Worth looking at for any chocolate lover, and includes an article on why chocolate makes you happy and even an animation of how chocolate works on the brain (it has clearly done its job on mine).

Chocolately retail therapy!

I just updated my 'Chocolate Shop' on the site here, and picked out a few things from Amazon that were of particular chocolately interest!

My favourite thing has got to be this Double Chocolate Fountain, which I'm considering putting on my list to Santa this year, which means I'll also need some yummy fondue chocolate to go with it.

There is also this Essential Chocolate Cookbook which looks like it has some amazing recipes. I only actually started cooking with chocolate again since stopping dieting (which reminds me, there is a Peri-Peri Chocolate Truffles recipe on my site that I still need to get around to making!).

The fear of hunger

Feeling hungry. It's what dieters fear the most, as ex-dieter Lesley suggests in her recent post in Raspberry Ramblings. But why?

Because when you know food is restricted, and there are only certain types of food you're 'allowed' to eat, the last thing you want to be in is a position where you're starving and you can't get hold of food that fits in with your plan.

And also, you fear that when hunger approaches, you may lose control completely and the diet will go completely out of the window, leaving you back to square one.

The feeling can take some time to pass when you begin intuitive eating. For many months, I'd make sure I considered where I might eat if I was to get hungry while I was out, and sometimes still did the dieter's favourite trick of packing something 'healthy' into my bag just in case hunger strikes.

A small victory

Okay, I know it's 'only water' but having decided to be mindful again, I've lost 3lbs this week and I'm feeling rather pleased with myself.

I hadn't weighed myself in absolutely ages, but after realising I'd been slipping away from mindfulness somewhat, on Monday I just 'checked in' on the scales (which I'd dumped at first and then brought back into my life - oh the shame of it!) to see where I was at (it wasn't pretty).

I do know my focus isn't so much weight loss as just finding the right relationship with food, but it still is rather good to see that eating what you want all week, but just stopping when you've had enough, can result in weight coming off rather than going on.

Today I wanted to diet

Actually, I don't want to diet today. But I did a couple of days ago, for a fleeting moment. And I just thought it would be useful to point out that, even 13 months on from the day I vowed to give up diets, I still have those moments where I begin to think a diet might be needed.

While I never actually get to the point of doing it, I think it just shows how strong that mentality is once you've experienced food-control of some kind. At times where you might feel out of control (for me, it's where I've got a bit bloaty and I panic that I'm going to turn into Augustos Gloop), the initial solution to regain control is often seen as being to diet.

Discovering shared journeys...

I was having lunch today with a new friend of mine - you know who you are ;) - and found out she has been following my site for around 6 months, yet when we first me only a few weeks ago, she didn't know it was me who wrote Chocolate and Beyond, nor did I know she was reading it! Isn't fate a funny thing?

She has found Chocolate and Beyond as an aid in improving her own relationship with food. Of course, that is similar to many of the women (and maybe some men) who occasionally dip in here. But what really struck me from this moment of serendipity we shared was the realisation of how far-reaching my words on this site can be.