Easter egg overload

Lindt bunnies, Smarties eggs, Creme Egg multipacks, sackfuls of Mini Eggs… if chocolate is a food you find hard to eat in moderation, or you are in a weight loss phase, Easter weekend can be a tricky one to navigate. By Bank Holiday Monday, it can feel like you’ve eaten too much chocolate, your weight loss efforts are ruined and you are a terrible person with no willpower. But wait…

Hard to resist

People love to be generous, and who wants to say no to your favourite chocolate in its ultimate form? Yep, the Easter egg hits that magical sweet spot of delicious choc in the perfect eggy thickness. And even if no-one buys you one because you’re an adult, the temptation to do the kids a favour and syphon off some of the many they have accumulated, is huge. They won’t miss a little Buttons one, surely?

Ideally, you’ve enjoyed your treats without going bananas and are now wearing a chocolate-smeared smile. You’ve eaten a couple of creme eggs, or a mini bunny, they were great and now you move on with a happy heart.

For years, that was not me. I would work my way through A LOT of Easter eggs, both mine and ones “borrowed” from my children. I’d smash through them quickly, because the sooner they were out of the way, the sooner I could stop hearing their siren call from the cupboard. The concept of not eating them, or just having a taste, honestly never crossed my mind. Or if it did, I would have dismissed it as being a pure fantasy, a way of behaving that belong to someone better and stronger than I am.

Your chocolate strategy

If overeating the chocolate treats rings true for you too and it’s been a two-day cocoa-bean bender with more still to come, here are a few things to keep in mind which helped me to take or leave the Easer Bunny’s wares;

1. It’s just a couple of days. If you’ve overdone it on the sweet stuff, draw a line and move on. Guilt is not an ingredient, nor is it a useful sentiment so let’s not give it the time of day. It’s only chocolate after all.

2. If you’d rather not eat any more Easter goodies, get them out of the house. Take leftover eggs to work to donate to colleagues, see if a local food bank, hospital or hospice would like them, palm them off onto family members, make them into chocolate chip cookies to freeze or if you have to (and I know this is a difficult one), get rid of them. I mean in the bin, not in your tum.

3. If you’ve eaten too much, have a think about why. This should come from a place of gentle curiosity, not judgement. Did you enjoy it all? Did you overeat because you usually resist and avoid that stuff? What might you have done differently so you feel better today?

The best piece of advice I have, though, is to be kind to yourself. If you’d aimed for moderation and missed, that’s normal and ok. Just because you may have eaten too much chocolate over Easter (or anytime), it certainly doesn’t make you any less fabulous than you were a couple of days ago.

And if self-compassion like that doesn’t come easily to you, let me help to bring the kindness and keep the perspective, so you don’t need to struggle on on your Tobler-own (sorry).