Best Mom Tip #138: Buy some dark chocolate

I am incapable of giving up sweets. I can do it for a week or two and once I gave up chocolate for Lent, but that's about it. At the end of the abstinence period I go right back to searching for sugar in my cabinets.

I have tried not buying anything sweet at all so that I won't be able to eat anything bad for me. I just wait for the kids to go to bed before I make up reasons for Jay to need to go to the grocery store and say, "while you're there...buy a half gallon of ice cream and a big bag of M&Ms."

I will also make up sweet things from the dregs in my pantry. Milk and powdered sugar makes a pretty good frosting for Teddy Grahams. Once I just ate chocolate syrup by itself. It was really hard to lick the bottom of the glass. In addition, I have sprayed aerosol whipped cream directly into my mouth like I was a hungover frat guy. Unfortunately, I had to stop doing that when the kids got old enough to recognize the sound of the can.

I've tried buying my favorite sweet things (cookies, ice cream) and just eating reasonable portions. It seems that I do not have an off switch until I feel like I am going to throw up. I will buy a tube of pre-made cookie dough and eat the entire thing with a spoon, somehow convincing myself that they pasteurized it and I will, therefore, not be on the news for dying from salmonella contracted from eating a food that is clearly marked "do not eat dough raw."

I will buy a bag of M&Ms and pound them by the fistful while watching Sister Wives on TV until I notice that the bag is significantly lighter. For instance. (BTW, why did moving to Vegas solve their problem with the polygamy investigation. Is everything really legal in Vegas?)

So my solution is that every week I buy one Lindt 70% Cocoa candy bar. I eat one or two squares at night with my Coke Zero after the kids are in bed. Sometimes I eat one in the middle of the day when I cannot stand hearing someone else say, "mommy."

Sometimes I eat 4 of them and then buy more M&Ms and eat those, too, but that isn't all that often and seems to be tied to potty training.

I realize that I still have some sort of problem with dealing with stress that I am burying beneath a layer of flab and some really wrinkly stomach skin. But at least the flab isn't getting much larger. For now.