Day 6

I really can get by on a lot less food than I normally eat. 

I don’t have to have chocolate every day.  I usually keep Dove dark chocolate on hand but sometimes go a week without having any.  In my Christmas stocking Brianne put a package of fun-size caramel Twix, which I really like, and some Dove.  On a shopping trip I got myself a bar of dark chocolate with bacon just to try.  I had been having one piece a day since Christmas and thought I was being disciplined.  Now I see that I can stretch it out even more than that.  I considered adding powdered cocoa to my fruit smoothies for chocolate taste.  I even checked the ingredient list and there were no milk products, just cocoa.  Fine, right?!  God spoke to me and said it’s really not necessary to add it.  I can do without.  This is a fast to rein in my flesh, not to see how close to the edge I can get without violating the guidelines.   

A fast is a good way to find out what’s wrong in your thinking, like with the chocolate.  I just couldn’t understand why I wasn’t losing weight.  I don’t think the chocolate was the only factor, but it’s what was revealed to me just now.  We’ll see if there are other things.   

I was at a dinner book club with friends this evening.  Of course it was at a restaurant.  I took a container of smoothie and a container of broth. 

One of the other ladies set her piece of chocolate cream pie down in front of me. 

Not directly in front of me like she was offering it, but…it was in front of me.  (It's kind of hard to see the pie, but it's just in front of my silver container with black and blue circles on it. Brianne's not here or I would have her make the picture black and white but leave the pie in color.) The victory is that I wasn’t lusting after the pie.  I looked at it but felt no compulsion to eat it for several reasons:   

1. It wasn’t mine.  That would be extremely rude!
2. I don’t like pie.  If I eat it at all, I eat only the filling because I don’t like the crust.  And in most restaurants whipped cream tastes very “industrial.”  This probably would’ve too. 
3. If I’m going to have chocolate, I’m not going to get it from Piccadilly pie.  It’s going to be quality chocolate that’s worth every calorie!
4. I’m fasting.  Duh!  Eating that pie or anything else right now would be direct disobedience to God and therefore sin.  Eating it another time may not be.  But I’m fasting now. 

So I had a victory tonight.  Thank You, God!  It really wasn’t even that much of a battle.  As soon as I saw it I knew I wasn’t going to eat it.  My mind still went through the thought process, though.  I just realized two things as I read over this entry. 

1.  Today was quite the day for chocolate, huh? 
2. That piece of pie never got eaten.  I don’t know why.  She didn’t even take it home to have later.  It seems as if that pie’s only reason for being was to teach me something.