Happy Easter! Another holiday based on chocolate.  How many does that make? Halloween, Easter, and Valentine's Day definitely. And then all the holdidays that are sort of about candy. Or at least sugar. Christmas cookies. Thanksgiving pies. Birthday cakes. Basically any holiday has sugar attached to it somehow either in food or alcohol. It becomes just another event to which a binge eater must come prepared with both resolve and options. I went to a meeting the other night. The people attending were encouraged to bring food to share. The meeting was after the dinner hour so most brought dessert items. Which were passed around the tables. Over and over again. So in front of my nose and within easy reach were home made chocolate chip cookies, bakery made eclairs, home made peanut butter cups that looked like reeses with a cookie wrapped around them and a flurry of other sugary items. In situations like this it takes all of my resolve to just keep on passing the stuff without taking any - what I don't want to have to do is explain why I'm not taking any. I have to give everything I've got to saying no in my head - I just don't have the extra energy to explain it to someone. Especially someone skinny who doesn't get it. Or a normal eater who doesn't get it. I was ok with most of the stuff but I really wanted one of those peanut butter cup things. Funny thing happened. I asked a friend sitting next to me (who is aware of my struggle) what it tasted like and she explained the different layers to me and somehow that took the magic away and it became easier to decline. Not sure why.  I managed to get through the night without eating sugar - and was able to concentrate on the meeting itself. So although I had to work at declining the sugar, it was not the center of the evening. That is a huge improvement for me. Huge.
Yesterday I was straightening up my dresser drawers and in the back of one I found an empty reeses peanut butter cup wrapper with a milky way wrapper stuffed inside of it. This had to have been there for months as I have been sugar sober for several months now. I held the wrapper in my hand and thought about the desperate woman who put it there.  Someone who must have thought that if she hid the wrappers, the self-abuse hadn't happened.  Someone who was in denial of her behavior and the symptom of her behavior - the weight. Someone who was living in a haze of sugar and regret.
I won't have any Cadbury eggs this Easter. No Reeses peanut butter eggs. No jelly beans. No solid chocolalte easter bunnys whose ears come off in a delicious snap of milk chocolate. But what I will have is size 16 jeans that are just a little bit loose now, thigh and calf and arm and stomach muscles that are stronger than they have been in years. An improved and steady mood and attitude. A resolve and determination to not just survive, but thrive.
I've been getting a lot of compliments lately. People are noticing my weight loss. That is both good and bad. Great to be complimented. But scary, too. Because in the past, on other weight loss journeys, I have listened to those same compliments and told myself that if I looked that good it must be ok to start eating sugar again. This time I must remember that I can never start eating sugar again. 
So Happy Chocolate-free Easter to me. I'm going to go take my book outside and soak up some calorie free rays of sunshine while I wait for my family to come and celebrate the reawakening of the world in this glorious season of spring.