Candy Crushed

At the start of the New Year, I decided to stop eating chocolate candy.

Notice I didn’t say sweets or sugar or anything broad like that.

I was very specific on what I would be giving up. Chocolate candy, like the snickers, m&m’s, rolos, Reese’s peanut butter cups, York peppermint patties, Mr. Goodbars, krackle, etc. You get the point.

Let me back up a bit …

Chocolate candy was my addiction.

At work, we have a candy drawer in a file cabinet filled with any candy you could ever want. We thought we were being clever and helping ourselves out by only buying mini-sized candy. One or two of those wouldn’t hurt us too much.

Except, I was not one who could stop at one or two pieces.

Especially if it was a particularly stressful day.

I don’t smoke.

I don’t drink alcohol (unless on vacation).

Coffee isn’t my thing.

But chocolate candy was the one thing that would soothe me when the day had gone haywire.

On an average day, I’d probably eat about six to ten pieces of those mini candies.

Equivalent, I would guess, to a full-sized candy bar. Then I’d need a few to snack on since I have an hour-long commute back home, grabbing another three to five pieces for the road. Once I was home, I’d eat dinner and then round it off with more candy for dessert. Can’t have dinner without dessert, right? Right? Of course, that’s right.

Somewhere along the way, with my old Weight Watchers leaders’ voices in my head, the concept of a “trigger” food re-emerged in my consciousness.

On days I binged on my mini candies, I also made other lousy food choices … like forgoing dinner and binging on other snacks instead, from chips to crackers and hummus, to peanut butter on a spoon, etc.

So, with that background, in January, I decided: NO MORE CHOCOLATE CANDY.

One month later, I can say that I have not eaten chocolate candy at all in 2020.

How did I do it?

Three things helped me crush my candy addiction.

1 – The primary reason for avoiding the chocolate candy had NOTHING to do with weight loss.

At the beginning of the year, my church does a twenty-one day fast, and you can choose whatever you want to fast. I picked chocolate candy because I knew that would be harder than even fasting all foods. My mindset was focused entirely on the reason for cutting out the candy, which gave me more determination not to eat it.

2 – Replace candy with other things I liked.

At first, I gave myself the green light to eat all other snacks but found that I replaced the candy more with fruits and cheese cubes. Fruit satisfied my sweet cravings, and cheese cubes gave me that feeling of satisfaction.

3 – I told the world.

Like literally, everybody that I’m around either at work or personally after work knew that I wasn’t eating chocolate candy. With that, the intentional or accidental temptations from others were squashed.

While I allowed myself all other sweets in January, I find that none of that triggered binge eating. I can have half a cupcake without wanting to devour two more. I can eat a cup of ice cream and then not go back to the bin for several days. Chocolate candy inherently is not bad, but my mindset around the goodies had become so warped that I can’t enjoy it without going overboard.

Now, I find that I don’t even crave chocolate candy.

I go to work and don’t even think about getting some out of the candy drawer and … I actually feel physically better (probably because I’m replacing those empty calories with more nutritious ones … but don’t think I’ve become a health nut because I haven’t).

The biggest test for me was after I got comments from my editor on the book I’m writing, the sequel to The Accidental Hero. That was the type of moment that would have sent me diving headfirst into a bag of peanut butter snickers minis (my most recent addiction). Guess what? Didn’t even cross my mind.

While I’ve recently found out that it’s a myth that it takes 21 days to form a new habit (or break an old one in my case), in 2020, that myth turned out to be true for me.