Demons: what I can have vs. what I want

THIS IS WHAT I CAN EAT FOR "FREE" 
but......................

THIS IS WHAT I WANT

This has been a very hard couple of days.  Thank goodness it's not a couple of hard weeks.  I wish, however, it had been only a hard couple of hours... or minutes... or thoughts....

We had company this weekend.  We pull out all the stops - great Lebanese cooking, desserts, appetizers, grilling (well we didn't grill this time because of the pouring rain but you can't begin to imagine the wonderful dinner I have in the oven), etc.  No reason WHATSOEVER that I can't eat all the deliciousness - but I have such a hard time with portion control.  Then the flood gates are open to everything else.  

Take cookies, for instance.  My friend wanted some cookies, so I got a "bucket" of oatmeal raisin cookies.  I ate 6 before I even got home with them.  Then, once I ate all those cookies, what did anything else matter?  So just now, when my friend said - take a cookie - one doesn't matter, I had to stop what I was doing immediately and explain: Eating a cookie opens me up to a downward spiral and I just can't do that to myself.  

I was so aware of this - not just as I was eating the cookies yesterday or thinking about them today - but when I was grocery shopping.  There are so many goodies out there.  Today I did my grocery shopping at Sudbury Farms (a lovely local grocery store, with everything from "regular" stuff to designer foods and a marvelous deli and bakery), Christmas Tree Shops, Whole Foods and Trader Joe's.  What an abundance of foods.  How much can a person eat?  I do realize that I can eat anything I want - but just not everything at once and in whatever portions I want.  There are so many tempting foods at our fingertips.  Daily.  In great quantity. In great variety.  Everything is special. Nothing is special.  Boxed. Frozen. Fresh. Canned. Bottled. Creamy. Crunchy. Cold. Hot. Smooth. Crumbly. 

It's so hard to be bombarded with everything and fall prey to nothing.  It's so easy to be derailed by a cookie. But let's not blame the cookie.  It's so easy to be derailed by one extra spoonful of a yummy dressing on a salad.  Why am I so susceptible?  If I knew why maybe that would be the key to a lot of my overeating.  I look at thin people in the supermarket sometimes.  And I just stand and wonder - how can they eat? What do they eat? What quantities do they eat? How do they stop and know that they've had enough? How can they eat one cookie?  How can they not take seconds or thirds or fourths?  I know each person may have demons of his/her own - and they fight even harder than I do (and that's why they are thin) or that they exercise it off or that they have eating disorders in the other direction.  But not everyone has a problem.  Some just are "natural" eaters - and stop when they've had enough and don't have to fight the demons day in and day out.

I know my demons and I am facing them as we speak.  Will I ever win?

Miriam