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Last night presented my first struggles since beginning a low-fat, vegan eating plan 5 days ago (I made a commitment of 3 weeks to my doc). I was making lunch for my daughter and the strawberries I’d planned on packing were nasty — so unripe and hard. To make them more palatable, I decided to dip them in chocolate for her.

I pulled out some Nestle’s chocolate chips. Typically I’d munch on handfuls of these while making anything with them (actually, it’s a miracle that I’ve had no desire to munch on them at all for the past 5 days!). Carefully, I looked at the ingredients and discovered that they contained milkfat, so I knew they were off limits.

While melting the ones for the strawberry dip, those cute little, bite-sized chips that had spilled onto the counter kept calling my name. “Just one,” they said. “You love us, and a few won’t really make any difference” each one called out!

Well, I had to do something or I was going to start chomping on them! That’s when I remembered that the last time I was at the health food store, I’d picked up a bar of fabulous dark chocolate flavored with orange essence (turns out, most dark chocolates are naturally vegan, though of course not low in fat). So I broke off a square, wrapped up the rest of the bar & tucked it way back in the pantry again, and put the square on the kitchen counter.

As I finished up my daughter’s lunch, I took tiny little bites of that incredible chocolate, letting each bite melt slowly in my mouth and waiting until the taste was fully gone before drinking some seltzer, then taking the next bite.

This got me through the lunch-making without snarfing up the chocolate chips — and, equally as important — without feeling deprived.

I must admit that at the very end, I did lick off the remnants of melted chocolate chips that were on the spoon with which I had stirred the melted chips. But wonder of wonders, that stuff tasted horrible! It just tasted bland and greasy next to what I’d just had.

Slept well last night. No dreams that I’d binged on a ton of junk and had gained 50 lbs overnight (a common nightmare). And no dreams of chocolate chips at all!

If this kind of ease with food can happen to me (chronically overweight, binge eater, chocoholic, cookie-holic, stress eater), it can happen to ANYBODY. No matter how many times you’ve tried, hang in there and do not give up hope.