Just say NO.

I don't have a lot of willpower.  I realize that.  I accept it.  I admit it.  I embrace it.

Obviously, being more than 100 pounds overweight, I was absent the day that God handed out willpower.  I was likely over at the buffet, stuffing my face that day.

I just don't get those people that possess it.  I'm amazed and somewhat awed by other people's ability to be offered a cupcake and TURN IT DOWN!  How does someone do that???

Or be given a big ol' bar of gourmet chocolate and resign themselves to eat ONE TINY BITE A DAY!

That's insanity, in my gluttonous world.

I don't get it, and I imagine that I probably never will.

But, I can white-knuckle it for a little while, (I'm talking an infinitesimal amount of time here!) and I can be proud of my white-knuckle moments.  I actually had 2 white-knuckle moments in a row, let's call them WKM's for short (WKM is pronounced "whack-em" by the way).

My first WKM moment occurred yesterday afternoon during the last hour of the school day.  I was tired.  Cranky.  Ready to go home.  Then, a bright and shining star walked through my door.  A first grader having a birthday walked in my room and brought me a big ol' chocolate chip cookie because it was his birthday.  Remember that?  When you were little and you brought treats to share with the class?  Well, nearly every week some kid shows up in my room with a treat.  Most of the time, I've never seen the kid before in my life, but they swear I'm their mostest favoritest teacher ever and they just have to give me a birthday treat.

I took the cookie.

Just to be polite!  I swear!

Okay, I was going to eat it.  I was thinking about it.  And if I had, it wouldn't have been a hugegantic deal.  It was probably worth 4-5 points...but that was 4-5 points I was going to use to eat something else, like dinner.  And I knew that if I did, I wouldn't be able to stop there.  I'd just keep on going.  So, I took a deep breath.  Gave the cookie a fond farewell, and chucked it in the trash.

Yea me!!!  I'm a rock star!!  I hear the Rocky theme song playing right now!!

Wait....what's this?  Is this a bag of leftover Christmas chocolate that a parent brought for our Christmas party and somehow got overlooked???

I seriously found this yesterday.  It was sitting on top of my bookcase in a grocery sack along with a bag of Christmas tree soft mint chewy things.  Now, the peppermints, even though they're pretty yummy, I can resist those....chocolate on the other hand, is a whole different story.

I'm like a meth addict when it comes to chocolate.  If someone comes too close to my chocolate, they're bound to lose an eye or an appendage.  Back off, sucka'!!  I'm not a nice person when someone tries to take my chocolate.

But much like the cookie, chocolate starts an avalanche effect that leads to eating the entire bag, and then looking for more chocolate, and what the hey, let's have ice cream and pizza for dinner, and screw this I'm done with watching what I eat for the rest of the week.

I've had plenty of time to observe my behaviors, and I KNOW this is exactly what will happen if I do not plan ahead for chocolate consumption and/or I have chocolate leftovers sitting around to tempt me.

So, in the last 20 minutes of school, I put on a video for the kids to watch while we got packed up and ready to leave and handed out my chocolate so it no longer could taunt me with it's milky-fatty yumminess.

Yeah, for me and my WKM!!  Two in one afternoon is some kind of record for me.  Usually I only have one WKM in a week, if that.

I really think that my ability to white knuckle it through 2 temptations within the span of an hour is directly due to you, my readers.  I have a few people checking out this blog and letting me know that they're pulling for me, and they encourage me to keep on keeping on.  I knew if I blew it yesterday, I'd be blogging about it, and I couldn't think of anything amusing to say about giving in to temptation and then quitting the whole thing because of a stupid chocolate chip cookie and a forgotten bag of chocolate.  So, thank you, whoever you are that is reading this.  Thank you especially to my friends and family who have left feedback on the blog and Facebook.  Your comments are what keep me motivated.

You rock.