For as long as I can remember, I used to like chocolate. “Like” is probably not the correct word. In the army, I used to buy stacks of chocolates, and more recently, buying chcocolate daily after breakfast was a habit I could not do without. What’s more, because everyone knew that I like chocolate, they gave me more chocolate to eat…

 

But finally, I did it. I’ve beaten my chocolate addiction problem. In fact, I eliminated most things that have pure sugar in it from my daily eating habits, with the exception of sugar in Jam, one hot Milo per day and sugar I add to my cooked oats to make them eatable. Do I want to eliminate those? Maybe not at the moment, except the Milo perhaps (but see below).

 

How did I do it. For tea and coffee, basically I just stopped adding sugar. I have tried this repeatedly, but eventually I stuck to it long enough that it does not make a difference to me anymore. It amazes me how much we can get used to things like drinking tea without sugar, even though I thought it impossible to imagine for most of my life.

 

The sweetened drinks were easy to eliminate. I basically publicly committed to never buy any drinks in non-refundable bottles (plastic bottles and cans). Since all the bottles in Singapore are non-refundable, that meant no more sweet drinks. And honestly, after a while sweetened cold drinks seem disgusting.

 

Which leaves us with the chocolate.

 

One thing that obviously helps to some degree is having other things that I can enjoy instead whenever I feel like eating chocolate. For me this is coffee, apples or nuts. But since this did not really solve the problem, what I tried first is to every morning plan (write down) everything I would eat during the day. That made quite a difference, and on most days I would follow my plans. But there were still many days when I did not, when suddenly the urge became so strong that I did not care about my plans.

 

The breakthrough came when I devised a scoring system for my daily food intake and limited myself to only eat up to a certain point number (10 points) per day. For instance, carbo rich food is “expensive”, a bagel with creamcheese, butter and jam is 2 points (If I skip the butter, I can save 0.25 points…). Salad and vegetables are cheap, apples are free (!), but chocolate and cake are really expensive. So I can still eat them, but I have to cut down on eating other things in order to do so.

 

Although the system seems somewhat arbitrary and one would think that it is easy to cheat, it somehow really works for me. The first thing that amazes me is that I strictly follow the system without being tempted to cheat. I guess it is like a goal I want to achieve every day, and I would feel I failed if I did not meet my target or if I cheated. Needless to say, I do keep track of my daily points, and since I started there has only been a single day where I exceeded 10 points.

 

Why the point system helps me to eat less chocolate is much easier to explain. Being faced with the choice of eating “real” food or chocolate and cake, I usually choose real food. But what makes this system work is that it allows me to still eat unhealthy things occasionally.

 

Importantly, the point system also works for chocolate or sweets that people give me as a present. This used to be THE big problem. You plan to cut down on eating sweets, and then someone gives you sweets to make you happy, which usually undermines your discipline and makes you eat things you normally don’t want to. The scoring system allows me to still have the treats, just not all in one day.

 

Naturally, I eat much less chocolate with this system, and as a result, the drive for chocolate has been gradually disappearing. And most importanly my conditioned reflex of yearning for chocolate when passing a 7-Eleven store has disappeared!

 

While writing this post, I also managed to eliminate Milo from my daily routine as well as eating oats without added sugar, which illustrates the power of writing about something. As Charles Duhigg in “The Power of Habit” writes, in order to kick a habit, it is necessary to first find out what triggers it. In the case of Milo, it was basically to motivate me to finish my work in the evening. So now I changed from Milo to having some coffee and a banana, The coffee keeps me awake and the banana is equally sweet as the Milo, but healthier. Similarly, in my oats I replaced the sugar with some banana. And I must say having been able to eliminate these makes me a lot happier and proud of myself.