On Being A Chocolate Fairy

After my week away from work and home and away from everyone who knows that I am a Chocolate Fairy, I was struck with the thought, 'Am I working too hard on Being A Chocolate Fairy At All Times?' It's possible.

At work I'm surrounded by Women On Diets. We even let a room in our building to a major diet company three times a week and so I encounter dieting women wandering our corridors looking for the room, or I see them climbing the stairs to the room, or even waiting outside to be let in. If I go out to a local cafe for lunch there is invariably a table full of women squealing at the impossibility of eating what they really want and opting for something they 'know they should have' instead. Even the Press is against me … almost every day there is an article about some celeb diet that's GUARANTEED to work EVEN FOR YOU! Or a photo of some hapless celeb on holiday in a bikini whose body is instantly judged by the paper as being 'hot' or 'not'.

There seems no escape.

No-one has ever said it to me and yet I feel I Must Uphold The Chocolate Fairy Principles At All Times, even if no-one knows that's what I'm actually doing. And so I deliberately eat things at work that aren't 'allowed' on any diet (regardless of what they may claim), and I ostentatiously leave some of my food every now and then, just to show the invisible audience that I'm in control of my eating, not the other way round. I make sure the ladies-that-diet at work know I attend Zumba classes and yoga classes and that I exercise at home with my dvds. I cycle everywhere I go around town.

Does all this sound ridiculous to you?

Because it actually is, in essence, how I do want to live. I want to be able to eat whatever I like, when I choose. I want to be able to leave food because I've reached satisfaction. I want to move my body in ways that I enjoy as often as I'm able to. I LOVE being a Chocolate Fairy. I love the freedom that Beyond Chocolate has helped me to find. I want to free all women from the torment of pointless dieting.

And before you all pen furious emails to Sophie and Audrey, this is nothing that they have done. They haven’t imposed any of these expectations on any Chocolate Fairy. Of course, they do expect that we will work with the principles in our own lives and that we will work at spreading the word to as many other women as we can reach. In fact, Sophie and Audrey are better at accepting me as I am now than I have ever been. All of the above concern is actually the work of my very subtle and hard-working Gremlin.

I am good at spotting my Gremlin in some of its interjections, but this is quite a big one that my Gremlin must have been working on quite successfully for quite some time. To make me worried that I’m over-doing being a Chocolate Fairy is a remarkable achievement and I’m just glad I spotted it before too much damage was done!

So I will continue to work with the Beyond Chocolate principles in my life and, as I get better at spotting its work, I will continue to thwart my Gremlin wherever it pops up.