It tastes great, for some of us it's psychologically and emotionally great, and it does that fantastic job of making us not feel hungry. And feeling hungry isn't great.
And therein lies a problem of trying to lose weight. If you have neither the time, nor the resources, to exercise all of those calories away - and if you work and have a family, you probably don't - you're going to have to eat less.
And that's just not fun.
And even if you can exercise all the calories away, all that exercise may well just end up making you feel more hungry anyway.
Being hungry
Unless you are particularly lucky, have worked out a great system, or are losing weight slowly enough that it isn't making a huge reduction to your daily calorie total and it doesn't hurt too much, you may just have to find a way of dealing with hunger occasionally, sometimes, or regularly.
And, you know what, that's nothing to be ashamed of.
It seems that there are plenty diets that shout about never feeling hungry. Well, possibly there are, but I really have neither the time nor the money to deal with them. I can't afford to have multiple smoothies delivered to me every day. I don't have the time to prepare multiple small meals for throughout the day, nor do I have the opportunity to eat them.
I'm sure the wonder that is the internet is full of sites telling me how I can lose weight by eating as much of what I want and never feeling hungry - no doubt by 'never eating the five things that KILL WEIGHT LOSS' or similar, but I'll take them with a pinch of salt.
And, if you think about it logically, if all of those diets worked as easily as they said, we'd all know about, everyone would be doing them and we'd all be the weight we wanted to be.
Much like the many emails that populate my spam folder offering an easy way to increase the size of my body - well, one part of it anyway - if it worked, we'd all be doing it.
And trousers would need a fundamental redesign.
Sometimes you're going to feel hungry, and getting through it actually isn't as hard as you might think.
Managing your hunger while eating less
I remember watching an episode of Horizon, I think it was the one that brought the 5:2 diet to the world's attention, in which Dr. Michael Mosley did a three day fast. He described hunger as coming in waves, but that they pass; and I've found that to be true.
Hunger doesn't gradually appear and continually build and build, the feeling of hunger appears, then it passes. Much like the waves Dr. Mosley describes, you can let them wash over you.
Now, obviously, this takes willpower. Not as much as you might think, but willpower nonetheless.
I came across an article on an online 'nutrition' site that said something along the lines of 'asking someone to lose weight through willpower is like asking a child not to get any taller through willpower.
I have one word -actually, I have a few - to describe what I think about that, but - as I don't know you well - I shan't use them for fear they might cause offence. I'll just say that these two situations aren't really comparable, but I think we all know that.
I'll come back to willpower, it's enough of a subject to warrant its own post.
Making it work for you
I'm not going to try and say I have all, or even any of the answers. We're all different, and we'll all deal with things in different ways.
If feeling hungry is a problem, then experiment with different ways to manage it. When I've been trying to lose weight previously, I'd tried a little an often strategy, that didn't work, I just felt hungry all the time. I found I felt much less hungry if I went as far into the day as I could, then ate the majority of my calories in one go.
I've tried high protein diets, that just doesn't satisfy the hunger. For me, high fat seems to work a lot better, keeping the hunger away for longer.
I've tried drinking water when I'm hungry, works Sort of. What absolutely doesn't work for me is chewing gum. All that seemingly does well for me is stimulate my appetite.
It's your body, you know it best. By all means, try the suggestions that you find, but if they don't work, don't worry about it, and try something else.
Right, having blown my calories at the front end of the week, I'm off to have one more cup of coffee for breakfast and fast until tomorrow morning...
Day 44 -2200 calories
Breakfast
Milk 100
5x double chocolate cookies (1100)
Lunch
Turkey club sandwich (550)
Dinner
Weetabix, milk and raisins (250)
Bread, butter and jam (200)
Exercise
Walking 70m
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