Avoid the Easter Binge

At Easter time, chocolate is in every shop and TV ad. It’s enough to melt away your good intentions and, with this much pressure, binging feels almost inevitable.

Eating chocolate is not inherently 'bad', the trouble seems to come when there’s too much chocolate, which leads to much temptation, eating too much in one go, then feeling miserable because you over indulged. The worst parts of a binge are the feelings of guilt and failure that you feel afterwards. Let's fix that.

Let’s accept that Easter will mean chocolate indulgence on one level or another. Here’s how to make the best of it.

1. Try to discourage family and friends from buying chocolate for you. This puts you back in control of how much you have.

2. Ideally, you’ll want to choose the darker chocolate eggs or chocolate selection. The higher the percentage of cocoa, the less room there is for sugar. Aim for over 70%.

3. Quality is important. Darker eggs from higher quality suppliers, like Green & Black’s, have less sugar, so won’t throw out your blood sugar as much.

4. Don’t to eat too much in one go with the intention of getting ‘rid’ of the chocolate sooner. Eating a whole egg will lead to an energy crash later on, not to mention, for many, feelings of disappointment in yourself that you ’gave in’ or ‘failed’. It’s healthier to have a small amount of chocolate more regularly and try to cancel out the sugar rush by eating a small handful of nuts at the same time (protein slows the speed at which sugar enters the bloodstream).

5. Save Easter eggs for pudding. Eating chocolate on an empty stomach spikes blood sugar levels.

6. Make sure your decision to eat chocolate is a conscious one. Remember, the responsibility is yours. You are the one who puts food in your mouth, even if it sometimes feels as though it is out of your control, it never is.

7. Consider that even the healthiest people over-indulge, but they don’t beat themselves up about it. They just go back to eating normally. Easter is ONE DAY. Don’t be on the rollercoaster for the rest of the month.

8. Most of all, ENJOY THE CHOCOLATE you do have and know that the only way you can feel good about it, in body and soul, is to eat consciouslyAt Easter time