My name is Tess, and I am a chocoholic

It never fails that as soon as I get into the sweet stuff, I get carried away.  Sugar is definitely more than just a nice treat for me; it's an addiction.  I wake up, go to sleep, and spend my whole day thinking about it.  If there are sweets in a room, I can't focus on anything else.  I try to justify breaking my diet for just a couple bites of whatever sugar I'm confronted with.  Yup, sugar consumes my thoughts and rules my life.  I'm a slave to my sweet tooth.

This week's cheat meal.  I was totally powerless against them.

My favourites include peanut butter ice cream, brownies, chocolate chip cookies, Reeese's peanut butter cups, dark chocolate with nuts, cherry danishes, peanut M&M's, hot chocolate, honey on toast, straight pure maple syrop, and pecan pie.

For the longest time I didn't think it was really a problem.  When I think of junk food, I think of chips and pizza and fries.  All of those things, thankfully, have never been hard for me to turn down; I don't get cravings for salty or fried foods.  I never considered sugar to be junk because it's "natural".... right? It's a commonly known fact that women love chocolate, and therefore it must be ok for me to eat it whenever, and in whatever quantities I like.

Of course, these are just the same types of justifications a smoker would make in order to keep on smoking. (Ok, maybe sweets aren't AS BAD as smoking, but the root problem is the same)  The problem for me isn't so much that I eat them often (maybe once or twice a week).  The problem is that I can't stop thinking about them, and then when I do finally cave in, I can't stop eating them!!  It's like, once I get that sweet taste on my lips.... watch out!

So, what's a girl to do?  Do you treat it like an addiction and never touch the stuff again?  Do you ween yourself off or go cold-turkey?  Do you switch to "natural", unprocessed sugars only?  What about substitutes like Stevia?  At least when I'm dieting it's a bit easier to keep things in check, because there's obviously no sugar allowed (except in cheat meals).  But what about the other 8 months of the year?

I'm not really sure where I was going with all this lol.  I think I just needed to get it all out in the open.  Though if anybody knows of a nicotine patch-equivalent for chocoholics, or has any tricks they'd like to share, I'd be much obliged!