Easter is around the corner and just like love, chocolate is all around. Good intentions melt away as quickly as an Easter Egg on a radiator as every conceivable empty space in your house is filled with colourful cartons containing what feels like kilos of chocolate.
Of course, chocolate is available all year round but what happens at Easter is that there is so much chocolate, everything seems to be covered in chocolate, chocolate gets bigger and is staring at you from every single supermarket shelf, in packaging covered in cute bunnies and chicks and flowers making it seem, well so much more tempting than a plain old bar of Dairy Milk!
So let’s accept that Easter will mean a chocolate indulgence of one sort or another - there's even chocolate in a hot cross bun these days - and try these 6 tips that might just take the sugary sting out of the chocolate bunny’s tail.
1. If you would normally receive Easter chocolate from friends and family but you'd rather not have a chocolate mountain in your house this year, simply ask them to please not to buy you an Easter Egg?
2. But then Easter wouldn’t be Easter without an Easter Egg, so perhaps ask for a dark chocolate egg – there are lots to choose from now and the higher percentage of cocoa, the less room there is for sugar.
3. Good quality, dark chocolate, apart from being absolutely delicious, does have some proven health benefits - it contains powerful antioxidants and trace minerals. Chocolate also contains phenylethylamine, the same chemical your brain creates when you’re falling in love!
4. “The quicker I eat it, the quicker it’s gone”…….but don’t eat all the chocolate in one go with the intention of getting rid of it! You won’t enjoy it, which would be a real shame, and doing this will only buy you a season ticket on the Blood Sugar Rollercoaster which comes with one almighty energy crash at the bottom!
5. Try having some chocolate after a meal instead of eating it between meals. Eating chocolate on an empty stomach will fire up your blood sugar but if you eat a piece after a well-balanced meal, this is less likely to happen.
6. Easter Eggs with their colourful, enticing packaging have “Eat Me” exuding from every fibre of their being and so when that Easter Egg is speaking to you, choose whether you do, in fact, want to eat it - you are in control not the Easter Egg. And if you do choose to eat that chocolate, eat it consciously - take it, sit down with it, eat it slowly and ENJOY IT!
Wishing you a very happy Easter
Amanda, Nicci and Nicola, your True Food Nutrition Team x
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