Too Many Buttons.

After scoffing at pudding-related health warnings in yesterday’s post, I suppose it was inevitable that things would turn sour for me at some point. I just didn’t think it would happen so quickly… Just after lunch, to be precise.

The culprits were chocolate buttons – dark, 70% type jobbies, from a place called Chococo (my favourite chocolate shop in the whole wide world, which happens to be based in my lovely home-county of Dorset).

I absolutely love dark chocolate, mainly because you can scoff it under the pretence of being healthy – it boosts antioxidant levels, reduces blood pressure, and increases the old seratonin supply to boot. There’s a catch, of course: you’re not supposed to have too much of it; just a couple of squares every day.

Now, the buttons I had were rather titchy – more like chocolate drops than squares, and certainly much much smaller than your average. In hindsight, however, I still had way too many. In fact, I lost count after my third… handful.

I know, I know. I’m a hog. In my defence, I was trying to dose up before an 8-hour stretch without any access to food (my afternoon shift at work, which also involves two 3-mile walks). On the other hand, it’s not like I really needed them: before I opened the chocolate tin I had already eaten a couple of cookies and downed a glass of clementine juice.

Perhaps some puddings are like alcohol: to be taken in moderation, without being mixed too rigorously. Perhaps (and this seems more likely), I just overestimated my dessert-processing capacities this time. Whatever. The results were not nice.

No more than 5 minutes after leaving the house, I was practically torn to pieces by the most violent of sugar crashes. Instantly depressed, with a horrible headache, and a rather dissatisfied stomach. It took me a whole afternoon to claw myself back to normality – an especially hard thing to do when you have to stay cheery at work, and all you want to do is hide.

Naturally, I don’t expect any sympathy – I brought this on myself, after all.  And I’d like to say I’ve learnt my lesson, but I’m sure it’ll happen again. It won’t be for a little while though. For some strange reason, we don’t have any buttons in the tin…