Do You Have a Chocolate Addiction?

Chocolate was only meant to be eaten or drunk as a special treat on sacred occasions, much like tobacco or alcohol. These were considered luxuries by the ancients partially because of the intense time to make them but mostly because of the havoc a lot could wreak upon the body. Everything is meant to be in balance, including what we eat. If you only drink one glass of wine on Saturday nights, you are not an alcoholic. If you knock ‘em back the moment you wake up to when you fall unconscious, then you definitely have a problem. If all you eat is chocolate, you may have a chocolate addiction.

But it’s Legal

True, chocolate addiction does not support any underworld culture. Very few robberies of candy factory warehouses happen. Very few defendants use “I have a chocolate addiction I have to support” excuse in front of a judge. But even if you ate only Iceberg lettuce, you’d still have an addiction. The body cannot survive on Iceberg lettuce alone, just as it cannot support itself on chocolate alone…even if the chocolate is covering fruit and nuts.

If you are eating chocolate constantly despite a doctor’s warning – say, if you have diabetes – then you definitely have a chocolate addiction. If you stop eating chocolate for twenty four hours and get very sick (including, but not limited to, trembling, teeth chattering, panic attacks, migraines) then you definitely have a chocolate addiction. The reason you get sick is due to withdrawal symptoms.

Retraining Taste Buds

So, you are used to chocolate, but know you have to drastically cut back or cut it out altogether. For the first couple of weeks, other foods will taste really bland or strange. This is normal. Think about when you were a kid. Perhaps you ate weird foods like peanut butter and mustard sandwiches. You don’t eat them now. Why? Because your taste buds have changed. They can even be trained to find foods you used to turn your nose up now to be delicacies.

The best way to knock off a chocolate addiction is to become homeless and eat only hand-outs and what you find in the trash. A couple of years of this, and your body will crave ANY food. But, of course, that option is a little extreme. But do keep trying new foods, new hobbies and drink plenty of water or herbal tea. And cut down your portions of chocolate when you do have it. The longer you keep at it, the easier it will be to stick to a new healthy diet.