Chocolate advent calendars!

ThomsonsPier · Post by **ThomsonsPier** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 11:41 am

Word up, y'all (no, I don't know what that means, either).

My mother kindly supplied me with an advent calendar a few days ago, to mark the beginning of the festive season. This means that, for the first time in quite a while, I have chocolate in the house. What's more, the very nature of this beast means that I must consume a small quantity of this substance every single day!

This is clearly in conflict with the tenets of No-S.

What do I do?
Do I give the chocolate to those more deserving?
Do I save the chocolate until the weekend?
Do I take it into the garden and bury it, leading to the risk that neighbourhood dogs will find it and poison themselves?
Do I melt it all down, mould it into the shape of a Frisbee and launch it skyward after the last chocolate comes out?

Such a quandary has never before blighted the roots of my very existence. My entire world is shattered.

Oh, well. Never mind. I think I'll just eat the chocolate and ignore the consequences for once. Merry Christmas, all!

British Chap · Post by **British Chap** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 12:47 pm

What a nightmare. You obviously don't have portable intuitive sweet disposal units otherwise known as children - they would sort your problem for you. They're extremely expensive to run but come in handy in situations like these.

I'd go extreme - challenge yourself to step up. Opwen the door each day, store the chocolate - keep it in the house but don't eat it until an S Day. I'd be cautious about giving myself 'mental permission' to eat chocolate every day again - feels a bit thin end of the wedge to me.

Alternatively - blend your options. Mould the chocolate into a Frisbee and then throw it to the neighbourhood dogs.

Either way - have a great Advent and every blessing to you.

Gareth

Post by **reinhard** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 2:39 pm

This is tough!

I think there are two more or less legitimate options:

1) As Gareth suggests, hoard them for weekends and S days.

2) Treat them as "medicine." They're actually tiny. One a day isn't going to do much, calorically. You could almost squeeze it in under the sugar in your coffee exemption. It's more of a boundary smudging issue because they're so clearly sweets.

3) Find a deserving kid to pass it on to.

I'm assuming throwing away mom's thoughtful, festive gift is not an option, so I won't even mention it.

Reinhard

kccc · Post by **kccc** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 12:01 am

Well.... a housekeeping site I go to has a rule about stuff you don't want to get rid of because someone gave it to you: You can toss the gift and still keep the love.

The idea is that if you honestly don't want it, it's clutter.

You might consider this a "cluttering gift." Or at least the chocolate portion of it. Toss it on N days, enjoy on S days. (And it's okay to hoard for S days if you want to - and can.)

Just because it's there doesn't mean you have to eat it.

But, as others said... it's calorically not much. So decide where you are on habit development, and if the little treat will derail you or not.

ThomsonsPier · Post by **ThomsonsPier** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 12:15 pm

Hello again, all, and thanks for the replies.

I was only joking for the most part; I'm really not bothered about the minute quantities in the advent calendar, since (as Reinhard mentioned above) it's less than the sugar intake in a cup of tea or coffee. As I don't take sugar in either, the addition of a small piece of chocolate every day for twenty four days per year is doing less harm than someone who drinks two cups of coffee with sugar every day. I just thought I'd bring this up as an issue on the seasonal application of willpower.

I'm also rapidly coming to the conclusion that I don't actually like chocolate that much. Do you think they make calendars with a small piece of cheese behind every door? One enterprising individual who deserves an honourable mention (I heard of this via the radio) is the man who bought a twenty four pack of small beer bottles, wrote numbers on them in magic marker and cut doors in the cardboard crate.

British Chap · Post by **British Chap** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 12:29 pm

You'd need to keep the cheese Calender in the Fridge because by Christmas Eve it would be honking if you kept it in the living room. The Camebert will probably have run out of the bottom onto the mantlepiece.

Gareth