Chocolate

I thought I'd eaten an entire box of after eights the other day. I'd been given them at work and picked at them all day. When I got the box out of my bag later I found only one or two amongst the empty paper carcasses of their brothers and sisters. Horrific. I thought I had unknowingly developed yet another eating disorder and came to terms with this after a couple of hours of deep thought. When I unpacked my hand bag later (truth be told it contained two bottles of red wine, a small bottle of vodka, pack of fags, pro plus, nine biros, a bottle of herbal anti-anxiety pills and half a bag of cous cous) I found the missing chocolates had not been eaten, oh no, they had formed a sticky mess in my not inexpensive hand bag, a mess that resembled a mixture of tar and cum. Lovely. What surprised me was that I was more relieved that I had not in fact scoffed the chocolates than I was annoyed that my tres expensive hand bag was ruined. Say my chocolate binge would have cost me 500 calories and my bag costs 500 pounds and yet I valued the non-eating of the chocolate over the handbag (Balanciega if you were wondering). Madness, surely? No wonder then that the UK diet industry is valued at over 10 billion pounds if the UK is populated by mentals like me. And I am really not that mad - I eat bacon and cake and drink and scoff and sit on my arse and get fat and don't care too much. Except that of course I DO as this little anecdote proves. I just care in that helpless retrospective way. If I was a crack addict then the empty box would be a still-smoking pipe and I would be pretty pissed off at myself but as of yet unconvinced that rehab is for me. I don't have an eating disorder (any more) but surely there's something a little bit crazy about regret when it comes to food? You eat and get fat and look back and wish that you hadn't so why would you just not do it in the first place? There seems something much more disordered about that way of thinking than just being honest with yourself and everybody else and say NO FOOD FOR ME from the outset. And I know I'm not the only one dear reader. It seems the world is split into anorexics and anorexics that deny their anorexia like dry alcoholics - we're off the vodka but it's all we can think about. Therapy anyone?