Sunday Night Snacking

I got caught today.  We made an agreement that I would not have more than 1 snack that was an "indulgence".  That includes any desserts.  I had a bag of Oreos I was planning to use to make Slutty Brownies with to take to a pot luck that I actually missed.  The bag was sitting there, taunting me.  It taunted me for almost a month.  So, with three days left before I go for hypnosis and am on a carbohydrate restricted diet, I opened the bag.  I had 4 cookies, and told Eric they were open and he could have some.  I then had 4 more cookies.  And after taking a nap from all the housework I did over the last two days, I woke up and had 4 more cookies.
So, a few of things have become clear to me.

1. I can not have Oreo cookies in the house.  Once the bag is open, I have no self control.
2. While I may not lie about how many cookies I have eaten, I won't disclose that I have had more than 1 indulgence snack unless I am directly asked if I have.  I also won't disclose how many times I've cheated unless I am directly asked.
3. I can be absolutely stupid about cookies.

We ate dinner, and I reflected on the fact that I had eaten 1/3rd of the package in one day.  Sundays tend to be a bit more relaxed here, and after a lot of work the day before I guess I felt I was entitled to have some cookies, which is why I opened the package in the first place.
Which comes to the real issue, treating food as a reward.
This is nothing new to a lot of people.  Food as a reward, specifically sweets as a reward, has been going on since people discovered they could catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.  As a child there weren't a lot of sweet snacks in the house.  My family just couldn't afford that kind of food, so I didn't have cookies readily available in my house.  My mom made some pretty fabulous cookies (Orange cookies are still a favorite of mine even though she has lost the recipe) and we all looked forward to the days when she would bake cookies.   I had an E-Z Bake oven when I was small, and I made chocolate cakes over a light bulb up until I used up all the mixes that came with the oven, and then it was put away because we didn't have the money to buy more of them.  The first thing I really learned to bake in the real oven was chocolate chip cookies.  I had the recipe for that and banana bread memorized.
We get our favorite cake on our birthdays.  If we are good at the dentist, we got a lollipop, sometimes even given by the same dentist!  If we don't cry when we get a shot at the doctor, we get a treat.  When things go wrong, we don't get the part in the play, the boy we have a crush on doesn't like us, we skin our knees, a cookie or some ice cream makes the pain go away.  So we learn to numb emotional or physical pain with a food palliative.  What we fail to remember is that there is always some pain in life, not everything goes our way.  But we continue to eat the sweets to "cure" the pain, and all we do is not feel the pain and put on the pounds.