The bet

No more

After a week with parents in town I feel relaxed and happy, but a bit like a chubby Easter bunny. It’s simply impossible to turn down temptation when your parents:

-Travel here with a suitcase full of Easter eggs and Swedish chocolate for their beloved daughter.

-Enjoy sitting down for a coffee and sandwich (mom) or a cake and beer (dad) every day of their holiday week (What are you supposed to do? Not join them?!).

-Encourage you to share a bottle of wine with them for dinner. Pretty much every day.

-Hides chocolate in your apartment (yes, for real) before departure so that won’t miss them too much.

Now when they have left, however (and all the hidden candy in my flat has been located and eaten), I am keen to do something about my sugar addiction. So, on Sunday night, in the heat of the moment (read: after 2 snickers bars and some large, sugary milk chocolate pieces that made me feel more like a pig than a bunny) I entered a bet with my significant other (in front of my folks –got to have witnesses when entering a bet), saying I will give up sugar for 2,5 months (yes! Months, not weeks!).

Why 2,5 months?

Well, because it’s 2,5 months until my holiday (no, not that I’m counting or anything, I just happen to know).

This bold statement of mine (anyone who knows me, knows that me saying things like “I’m not going to eat chocolate for a while” is quite bold –I’ve got a bit of a thing for cocoa –meaning I eat a lot of it. Every week) resulted in bemused smiles from my folks, and a long “no way, you’re never going to make it”-look by my bf.

Being a sucker for challenges I’ve taken the bet to my heart, only though…. It’s kind of hard not to eat sugar, or so I’ve realized when I, on Monday, entered my new, sugar-free life and was faced with the following situations:

1. On Monday (which was a holiday for me) I had a mini “picnic” in the park with a girlfriend (I call it “picnic” because she brought a ready-made sandwich from the shop and I brought sushi) and she brought along a package of chocolate chip cookies. I looooove chocolate chip cookies. But this time I had to turn it down.

2. Later the same day, I did something I rarely do, namely ordered in food, and imagine my surprise when I was given a gift muffin (!) just because it was Monday! So there it was: a large piece of temptation standing on my kitchen table. Not to be enjoyed by me, that’s for sure.

3. Then, Tuesday in the office. Coffee and cake. Cake and coffee. Snacks in the kitchen. Swedish chocolate. I had to make a real effort not to fall for temptation, especially since it was one of those busy days when you barely have time for lunch and your blood sugar drops in the afternoon and you feel kind of weak and dizzy but you’ve decided to go to the gym so you end up thinking: “hm…maybe I could just have a cookie or two, and I’ll feel much better on the treadmill.” But no, oh no, not me. I have a bet to win.

So, three days into the bet and so far so good. I’ve also been at the gym every day, and today I’m going to yoga (Maybe some serious Namaste-ing can help my mind to think of other things than chocolate brownies?).

However, I know that when the weekend comes is when the real challenge appears. Because this weekend, a good friend of mine is coming to Shanghai for a visit, and I just happen to know that she’ll see me and say:

-Hey, let’s go to Whisk! Just for old times sake!

And how on earth am I going to be able to hit Shanghai’s best chocolate café and NOT have chocolate?

To be continued.