Hi Nikki,

I felt to add some encouragement from my own experiences with this in the past year. I didn't judge myself when I felt the need to indulge but simply paid attention to how I felt afterwards and in what ways it could be described as better compared to how I felt if I didn't indulge. If that experience was gone the next day, i.e if I felt like buying candy or whatever again, I just did it with a sort of childlike curiousity 'gee I wonder if the feeling today will be the same as yesterday'

Then came the first day where I went for groceries and said no, I'm not buying this (chocolate or whatever) today. Just not doing it. Actually felt somewhat angry with myself as a form of being afraid of not having any comfort food in the house that day. The next day, call it a reward if you will, I bought it anyway and felt happy to do so. In many ways that feels like a stupid thing to do but over time, the dynamic expanded and the need to 'reward' myself in this manner slowly disappeared. The time between craving and rewarding expanded slowly over the course of several months, where deciding not to buy comfort food somehow turned into a basic decision.

Currently, the cravings are gone without me ever actively trying to stop it or go against it. All I did was take a small 'insignificant' step each time. In the example above, considering the fact that I managed to go one day without as a cause for celebrating it by indulging the next day may feel like you lost or you gave in or you can't do it, but in the end, this approach allowed my ego to slowly detach rather than trying to force a new lifestyle upon myself.

So I would say the encouragement boils down to: accept that it will still be there for a while, focus only on the small percentages of victory, don't see 'going back' as a loss or mistake (and definitely not as if you're doing it wrong!) , give your ego time to experience the difference and see for itself that this isn't the way. Somehow, over a few months, you may suddenly realize that you can't even remember why the craving was there in the first place. This is how it worked for me, take from it what feels like it would work for you and I wish you succes!