I should tell you about what happened on Friday evening…there was a monumental battle of wills between me and the Asshole voice, who was demanding chicken chow mien and prawn toast from the Chinese takeaway.

It’d definitely been a game of two halves on Friday where my eating was concerned – someone brought donuts into the office, and I’m not just talking about regular donuts, I mean these were seriously impressive donuts. I’m not a massive donut fan under normal circumstances but one look in the box and I was a convert…my fat-girl food radar went off the scale. I’d been all over my food choices up to that point, eating fruit mid-morning followed by quite a light lunch, so by the mid-afternoon snack stop there was a fairly respectable amount of food budget left to go after.

However, much as I fancied one of those bad boys, I had no way of pointing them and I worried that my best guess might be way under…they were big and sticky and chocolatey, and the only safe way to indulge would’ve been to sacrifice the next three years’ worth of points, you know? I decided they just weren’t worth it.

So instead, I opened a packet of biscuits that someone from the trading team had brought into the office, because they were only six points each. I say only six points, that’s about one sixth of my daily food budget. It’s high, for a biscuit, but I rationalised it to myself in the same way I do when I spot a handbag I can’t afford in the sales, you know? But it’s only this much, really I’m saving on what it would’ve cost me at full price, look it’s a bargain…compared to the donuts, they were a bargain.

The thing is, once I’d got the taste for them I couldn’t leave the damned things alone. I ate four, one after the other in that way where even as I was eating one I was thinking about unwrapping the next. They got me. Which didn’t leave me with a whole lot of options come suppertime.

When I got in from work, I had a poke about in the fridge and decided that my best option for dinner would be a bunch of grapes…right then. Awesome. My own fault, but I’d kind of squared it away with myself, and I was resigned to having an early night to compensate for having too much day left at the end of my points.

I wish I could’ve captured the next couple of hours on a time-lapse video to show you…it sort of went something like this:

Me, around 8pm, peckish because of a mis-spent points day with nothing left in the coffers, and not feeling the grapes at all. Boy walks in with chips and Chinese curry sauce. Smell pervades house. Boy eats up, then goes out. Smell lingers. Forced out of chair by onset of starvation to check discarded wrappers for stray chips. Find none. Need chips. Sit back down in chair, mentally run through Chinese takeaway menu, and fantasise.

Decide on chicken chow mien and prawn toast. Get out of chair and put shoes on, to go order. Take shoes off again and sit back down. Watch TV but see nothing. Prawntoastprawntoastprawntoast. Get back up and walk three times round kitchen, whilst pondering how many times around it would take to earn enough points for chicken chow mien and prawn toast. Remember exercise points are now off limits. Sit back down and sulk for five minutes.

Go back through takeaway menu in my head to find low point alternative. Don’t find one. Chicken chow mien and prawn toast it is then. No, it isn’t. Yes it is… NO! IT’S NOT.

Go back into kitchen and systematically examine contents of every cupboard looking for filling tasty alternative, containing no points. Epic fail, no such thing exists. Bite the corner off a dry Ryvita. Spit it out again. Put shoes back on and grab purse. Dog gets excited and thinks we’re going out. Dog looks confused then pissed off as shoes come off again….rinse, and repeat. 

I went to bed in the end, at about half past nine, still chuntering to myself but without a morsel of chow mien or prawn toast having passing my lips. It was a close-run battle, but you know what…the craving eventually passed as they always do.

In the moment, it feels impossible, but cravings always pass, if I can just bite down and hold the line. I woke up the next day ready to grab my food plan by the balls, and I was in control all day without a peep out of the asshole voice…just goes to show, right?

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