In a Pickle with Chocolate Eggs...

Easter Sunday is one of two days in the year when it is completely acceptable (and often encouraged) to eat chocolate for breakfast. In our house, this is not just a possibility, it’s a rule.

However one of the downsides of this seemingly utopian concept of free chocolate is the extortionate calorie intake and inevitable pounds gained from eating zed chocolate.  This is a problem. Especially if you’re on a diet, and yes, I am on a diet.

This morning I woke up to no less than four beautifully packaged chocolate Easter Eggs and a rather large and happy looking Chocolate Bunny. I didn’t quite know whether to lean out of the window and sing my rejoicing to the birds or cry.  In my confusion, I chose neither. I had fruit for breakfast, not as a sign of disrespect and ungratefulness to my family members who had purchased an Easter treat for me, but out of respect for myself- making any subsequent chocolate abuse seem less damaging.

All of the chocolate giving made me think. I don’t want the eggs because I don’t want to gain weight; however I do want the eggs because I love chocolate more than you can imagine! When you’ve been on a diet that restricts the consumption of chocolate down to...nothing, it’s quite hard to resist the pull of those smooth sweet egg shells and the treats hidden inside them. I found this to be more than true when, having completely ripped open the tyre of our car on an awkwardly positioned kerb; my boyfriend and I found ourselves stranded. While he worked his masculine magic trying to change the tyre (and promptly giving up and calling his dad for reinforcements), I stayed in the car, listening to- and singing very loudly to- songs from the musicals on Radio 2. As I screeched out the top line of ‘Seasons of Love’ I realised that I had been left in the car, unaccompanied, with two rather fancy looking Easter Eggs. From that moment I knew that it could only end one way. I smelt the chocolaty butterscotch egg but it wasn’t enough. I didn’t want to eat it, but before the duo had finished fitting the spare wheel to the car, the egg was gone! What had I done?

After consuming a whole Easter Egg by yourself you start to consider just how bad for you it is, ‘a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips’ and yet I rather enjoyed it. I had eaten the egg out of boredom and lack of self control- it was amazing. However, hours later when you’re still feeling rather round and bloated from your chocolate binge, you realise that you really shouldn’t have eaten that egg and begin to worry about what you’re going to do with the other three large chocolate treats and their rabbit counterpart. So next year, please don’t buy me chocolate, buy me new underwear, buy me socks, buy me anything, buy me nothing, but please don’t buy me chocolate.