Is there life without chocolate? (Day 20)

Yes, of course, you can live without chocolate, but would you want to?! What kind of quality of life can there be without the occasional indulgence? I pondered this question as I stood in line at Trader Joe's ... right where their 3-packs of chocolate bars are. They say a little chocolate is good for you, right? ... full of healthy flavanoids. I thought perhaps I should bring some of this miracle food home ... purely for medicinal reasons of course. My cart was full of organic fruits and veggies, rice cakes, corn tortillas, Better'n Peanut Butter (love that stuff!), fruit spread and canned beans. I was talking myself into it rather fast, when my husband came in ... drat!

Oh well ... I thought it was for the best. I don't know that I would have been able to limit myself to a "medicinal" portion each day. The scene probably would have played out this way ... one bar as soon as I got home, another later in the evening and the last one for breakfast the next morning. Then I remembered that I did have about half a bag of some vegan semi-sweet chocolate chips in the fridge, leftover from some months ago. Being semi-sweet, they weren't so tempting. If they had been milk chocolate chips ... well ... there never would have been any leftovers. Anyway, I had the idea that I could layer some Better'n Peanut butter on a rice cake, microwave some semi-sweet chocolate chips and spread on top. My mouth was watering at the thought and I couldn't wait to get home and try it.

At home, I read the label of the package of chocolate chips: 70 calories for 1 Tbsp. (15 grams). I have a scale that measures in ounces or grams, so I measured out 7 grams of chips. I spread about 1 tbsp. Better'n Peanut Butter on my waiting rice cake and put the chips in a microwaveable dish and nuked them for about 30 seconds. I used a rubber spatula, so as not to miss a drop, and spread the melted chocolate on top of the rice cake. I didn't even wait for it to cool off ... oh my ... my taste buds were doing the happy dance. Wow! Only 120 calories of bliss! I had a second one for evening snack, after dinner. That was Sunday. Dinner, by the way, was eating out at Applebee's. I chose their Cajun Tilapia on the WW menu.

So yesterday... my day off ... I spent most of the day just lazing around 'cause I was in so much pain. Well ... lazing around between cleaning house, doing laundry, packing up merchandise to ship from my online antique business and fixing my dear husband breakfast and packing his lunch. I don't know what is going on with me. I'm in a lot of pain today too. I went home for lunch and just sat in the recliner (after fixing my husband's lunch) and cried, I'm in so much pain. But I digress ...

So yesterday I decided to have my little chocolate rice cake concoction again. And again, it was wonderful ... and the second time, even more wonderful ... and the third time ... and the fourth time ... and ... well ... you get the idea. Being in pain is a condition that makes me want to eat continuously as it is ... put chocolate into the picture and I was a maniac ...a chocolate chip melting, rice cake spreading maniac.

Today's a new day ... praise the Lord! I've done well so far: muffins for breakfast, potato salad and a beet for lunch. There's still some chocolate chips left, though. Not enough to do any damage today ... maybe one or two rice cakes worth.