Chocolate

On the day my prize of a Divine Chocolate Hamper arrived, I spotted another competition on the internet that requires you to post a photograph of yourself with a bar of their Dark Chocolate with Orange and Ginger. I love to reinvest my prizes into new competition entries (false eyelashes in my very first win of a 'beauty bag' were reinvested into Taylor's entry into the video comp to win the signed guitar). I hadn't intended to look too closely at the contents of my chocolate hamper given that I am trying to loose weight but I just thought it was worth checking to see if it contained the bar I needed, then I could start planning my photo.

The good news was that yes it did contain the specified bar. The bad news was that handling all those chocolate bars, sorting through them like oversized playing cards, feeling the weight of that solid, melt in the mouth, dreamy chocolate goodness.....well it was too much temptation to resist.

I selected a bar - White Chocolate with Strawberries. I savoured every moment of opening the thick paper wrapping and the foil coated wrapping beneath. Once revealed, the white chocolate slab encrusted with tiny pink strawberry jewels screamed at me to place just one small square on my expectant tongue - which I did and then did again and again. Oh but it was nice. I loved the sweet and creamy taste of the white chocolate and the strawberry zing was delicious in taste and texture.

I did try and moderate my intake but my resolution to wrap it up and put it away for later did not last longer than a few minutes. Before my brain could say no, my hands had already given my mouth what it craved! For a brief taste of heaven, I had a 534 calorie excess to compensate for in some way.

I took my guilty calorie burden to the gym with me. I was determined to put in enough effort to make up for my weakness. Unfortunately my gym partner, Liberty, was suffering from 'end of first half term teaching' fatigue and still chasing off the remnants of a cough and cold. I was powerhousing my way through our workout whilst she delicately tiptoed through it. I relished the feeling of my hard earned sweat washing my conscience clean!

We always finish our workout on the treadmill but they were all occupied so we decided to put in a few extra minutes on the cross trainer while we were waiting for availability. Just out of interest we thought we would experiment with one of the different programmes and swapped our usual manual setting to a cardiovascular one. This involved inputting your age and weight and allowing the machine to read your heartbeat rate. It then automatically adjusted the resistance to bring your rate to the optimum level for effective exercising.

I had been on such a chocolate guilt fueled exercising frenzy already that the machine decided I should really take it easy - especially at my age!! It was not so lenient on Liberty. Being young and fit, the machine decided that she should be put through her paces.

Exercise is supposed to be good for you. Laughing at Liberty trying to keep up with the cross trainer was certainly very good for me! You know those dreams where you try to run but you feel like you're running through treacle.... Liberty was neck deep in treacle. Her face went a delightful shade of crimson. I could actually see her heart pounding through her gym top - but it was not good enough for the machine. Maybe there was something amiss with the sensor that monitored the heart rate because it seemed to just keep loading more and more resistance against the futile efforts of my poor daughter. At one point I thought her eyeballs might actually pop. She did eventually conceded defeat.

I don't know if the workout I did will counteract my chocolate indulgence - no doubt the scales will tell me next weigh in - but I do know that I love going to the gym with my very funny daughter.

As for the chocolate hamper, I will be putting that out of temptations reach for the time being and when I do dip into it again,  I will definitely make sure I share the calories!