The secret joys of online shopping

Lots of people shop online these days. Some people even do most of their shopping this way or find innumerable bargains you'd never get in the shops. But I am not like most people. I don't buy shoes online, I prefer to try them on. I don't buy clothes online because I am too hung up about my own squishy body to trust an item of clothing I haven't seen on me. I am getting arm loads of bargains via the internet. My purchases are a lot less exciting, mostly supplements and protein powder and aside from that the thing I have bought quite a lot online is chocolate. Not mountains of it and not even amazingly cheap chocolate and yet I have taken to the internet to source it.

I know it seems like an odd choice given how much chocolate is readily available to me at any point in time but I am going the extra mile because this chocolate is special. True story.
So I know I've mentioned that I'm off sugar and alcohol and so on and it's going okay. Three weeks now and I haven't had so much as a bite or a drop and aside from the fact that I didn't quite manage to give up spelt, I'd probably give myself a pat on the back. Well this is where my online shopping comes into it. During my many spells of sugar free dieting ( the fact that I have done this several times will give you clues as to how well its been going for me) I had come to discover that is possible to get chocolate made with coconut sugar which counts as sugar free and is a lot better for you without processed sugars addictive qualities. My chocolate of choice used to be magic mayan which satisfied the craving but was still on the grainy side but it did the trick. Then, more recently, my sister introduced me to om bars. A tiny bar of chocolatey deliciousness which costs you €3 in my local health food shop. Sadly in adventures in healthy eating the biggest lesson I have learned is that the more you try to clean up your diet, the broker you are going to be but even with this knowledge, I could still tell I was being robbed. Plus, because when it comes to chocolate I can eat, I will tolerate a certain degree of robbery (if it's expensive then I'll be a lot less likely to gorge myself on huge amounts of it) but to add insult to injury, the only place I can get it close to home seems to stock two flavours and they are not delicious.

This leaves me with my other chocolate options; I can eat regular chocolate, go completely overboard and make myself very sick and emotional, I can eat bars with xylitol or malitol (sweeteners ending in ol must be made of poison judging by how I react to them) and be much much sicker than if I ate regular and more delicious chocolate but not be left craving more or I could eat the ones sweetened with stevia which (you guessed it) make me sick. Of course I could just not eat chocolate at all. That is a possibility, even if it is one that sucks and I've tried it but it just makes me feel very sad. Laura needs her occasional treats and that is how I found myself online ordering one regular sized dark chocolate om bar (on http://www.therawchocolateshop.com/index.asp) while my boyfriend sat beside me on the couch laughing. I did not think it was a laughing matter because clearly he just doesn't understand. I am still waiting for  said bar to arrive and however sad it may be, I am very excited at the prospect. It has to be said that the only thing more exciting than buying yourself presents online is the moment where you receive them in the post and considering I get excited when my protein arrives, you can only imagine how  this bar of chocolate is going to make me feel.